Publication List

@article{Toll-Riera2011a,
title = {Lineage-specific variation in intensity of natural selection in mammals.},
author = {Toll-Riera, Macarena and Laurie, Steve and Albà, M Mar},
url = {http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20688808},
issn = {1537-1719},
year = {2011},
date = {2011-01-01},
journal = {Molecular biology and evolution},
volume = {28},
number = {1},
pages = {383--98},
abstract = {The molecular clock hypothesis states that protein-coding genes evolve at an approximately constant rate. However, this is only expected to be true as long as the function and the tertiary structure of the molecule remain unaltered. An important implication of this statement is that significant deviations in the rate of evolution of a gene with respect to the species clock are likely to reflect functional and/or structural alterations. Here, we present a method to identify such deviations and apply it to a data set of 2,929 high-quality coding sequence alignments corresponding to one-to-one orthologous genes from six mammalian species--human, macaque, mouse, rat, cow, and dog. Deviated branches are defined as those that present significant alterations in both the rate of nonsynonymous substitutions (dN) and the selective pressure (dN/dS). Strikingly, we find that as many as 24.5% of the genes show branch-specific deviations in dN and dN/dS, though this is a relatively well-conserved set of genes. Around half of these genes show branch-specific acceleration of evolutionary rates. Positive selection (PS) tests based on divergence data only identify 17.7% of the accelerated branches. Failure to identify PS in accelerated branches with an excess of radical amino acid replacements suggests that these tests are conservative. Interestingly, genes with accelerated branches are significantly enriched in neural proteins, indicating that this type of protein might play a more important role than previously thought in species diversification, although they are generally not detected by PS tests. We discuss in detail several examples of genes that show lineage-specific evolutionary rate acceleration and are involved in synaptic transmission, chemosensory perception, and ubiquitination.},
keywords = {Amino Acid Sequence, Amino Acid Substitution, Animals, Evolution, F-Box Proteins, F-Box Proteins: genetics, G-Protein-Coupled, G-Protein-Coupled: genetics, Genetic, Genetic Variation, Humans, Mammals, Mammals: genetics, Molecular, Molecular Sequence Data, N-Methyl-D-Aspartate, N-Methyl-D-Aspartate: genetics, Odorant, Odorant: genetics, Receptors, Selection, Sequence Alignment}
}

@article{Farre2007,
title = {Housekeeping genes tend to show reduced upstream sequence conservation.},
author = {Farré, Domènec and Bellora, Nicolás and Mularoni, Loris and Messeguer, Xavier and Albà, M Mar},
url = {http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2323216&tool=pmcentrez&rendertype=abstract},
issn = {1465-6914},
year = {2007},
date = {2007-01-01},
journal = {Genome biology},
volume = {8},
number = {7},
pages = {R140},
abstract = {Understanding the constraints that operate in mammalian gene promoter sequences is of key importance to understand the evolution of gene regulatory networks. The level of promoter conservation varies greatly across orthologous genes, denoting differences in the strength of the evolutionary constraints. Here we test the hypothesis that the number of tissues in which a gene is expressed is related in a significant manner to the extent of promoter sequence conservation.},
keywords = {Animals, Base Sequence, Conserved Sequence, CpG Islands, Evolution, Gene Expression, Genetic, Genetic Variation, Humans, Mice, Molecular, Molecular Sequence Data, Promoter Regions}
}

@article{Alba2002,
title = {Detecting cryptically simple protein sequences using the SIMPLE algorithm.},
author = {Albà, M Mar and Laskowski, Roman A and Hancock, John M},
url = {http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12050063},
issn = {1367-4803},
year = {2002},
date = {2002-01-01},
journal = {Bioinformatics (Oxford, England)},
volume = {18},
number = {5},
pages = {672--8},
abstract = {Low-complexity or cryptically simple sequences are widespread in protein sequences but their evolution and function are poorly understood. To date methods for the detection of low complexity in proteins have been directed towards the filtering of such regions prior to sequence homology searches but not to the analysis of the regions per se. However, many of these regions are encoded by non-repetitive DNA sequences and may therefore result from selection acting on protein structure and/or function.},
keywords = {Algorithms, Amino Acid, Amino Acid Sequence, Amino Acid: genetics, Databases, Genetic, Genetic Variation, Internet, Minisatellite Repeats, Minisatellite Repeats: genetics, Models, Molecular Sequence Data, Protein, Protein: methods, Proteins, Proteins: chemistry, Repetitive Sequences, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Saccharomyces cerevisiae: genetics, Sensitivity and Specificity, Sequence Analysis, Sequence Homology, Software, Statistical}
}