Local‐scale repetitiveness in amino acid use in eukaryote protein sequences: A genomic factor in protein evolution

We showed previously that the use of arginine versus lysine residues in eukaryote proteins is correlated positively with local GC content of the genome within ≈50 residues. Cumulative analyses show that the tendency for self‐clustering (or repetitive use) generally is the case for all types of amino acids except for certain hydrophobic types. The degree to which each of the amino acids is used recurrently is weak for ancient proteins (or protein domains), those that are conserved through both eukaryotes and prokaryotes, but strong for modern proteins, which are unique to organisms of particular phyla. These findings support the idea that repetitiveness occurs due to a propensity of genomic DNA to cause tandem genomic duplication. A protein sequence with high repetitiveness tends to be unique in the homology search, which may indicate the weaker constraints and, hence, more arbitrary use of amino acids. Simulation analyses suggest that tandem gene duplications on a very small scale (1 or 2 codons) is an important causal factor in maintaining repetitiveness in the presence of concomittant occurrence of substitutive point mutation. For yeast proteins, ≈1.3 duplication events per 1,000 residues on average are likely to occur, whereas 10 events of substitution mutation occur. It also is suggested that duplication enhances the probability of occurrence of some peptide motifs, such as those found in zinc fingers and segments with extreme physicochemical characteristics, and, thus, that local repetitiveness is a genomic factor influencing the evolution of eukaryote proteins. Proteins 1999;37:284–292. ©1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.