Come up with two-three critiques about this article \"Inferring nonneutral evolu
ID: 59334 • Letter: C
Question
Come up with two-three critiques about this article "Inferring nonneutral evolution from human-chimp-mouse orthologous gene trios."
The essence of criticism is that it is a creative reflection of our considered viewpoint accompanied by a reasoned argument. Critical comments can be either positive or negative, and criticism can involve strengths and/or weaknesses of the target article.
Article:
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/8963685_Inferring_Nonneutral_Evolution_from_Human-Chimp-Mouse_Orthologous_Gene_Trios
Explanation / Answer
Non-neutral evolution means evolution has occured by natural selection, not via genetic drift. Here we are talking about human-chimp-mouse evolution. These have certain orthologous genes = having same function (homologous genes(same origin having different function) found in two different species). Ultimately the origin of all these genes is same. I will argue in favour of this statement.
Initially according to environmental conditions, these genes started performing different functions (homologous) in the three species. In course of time, the genes changed completely. When environment conditions changed again, these different genes started performing their original functions, but now genes had been changed. This all is a result of natural selection. And only those are selected who are capable of surviving the changing environmental conditions.
For doing the same, sequence alignment of genes of the trio has been done in the given article. When human and chimp sequence alignment is done 18.5Mb DNA was found to be aligned (20,000 gene alignments were found). This DNA belonged to exon region, showing conserved regions. This means that the evolution is non-neutral. Had it been neutral evolution, the number of alignments would be less in exon region.
Similarly, comparison was made for mouse. Ultimately 7645most conserved genes were taken for comparison.