On the conservation of protein sequences in evolution.

In their comment about our paper,Philippe and Lopez note that, ‘theevolution of proteins and of their functionsshould be considered a much morecomplex phenomenon than assumed bystandard models’. We agree with thisstatement. Nevertheless, we would like togive some explanatory notes to theirdiscussion of our paper.We did not reject in general thehypothesis of horizontal gene transfer(HGT) in the case of glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) andalcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) betweenanimals and

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