Matthew N. Rasband offers a Perspective on the findings of Hill et al., who performed a phylogenetic analysis of invertebrate and vertebrate Na+ channels to define where along the evolutionary tree the AIS targeting motifs arose.
The authors show that the downstream target for HMGCoA reductase both in generating the germ cell attractant and in releasing the Hedgehog ligand is the G protein, Gγ1.
These results identify novel, plausible, and functionally related variants associated with Kawasaki disease susceptibility that may also be relevant to other cardiovascular diseases.
The authors show that the principle of slower evolution of more important genes does have some predictive power when genes with vastly different evolutionary rates are compared.
PLoS Biology; PLoS Medicine; PLoS Computational Biology; PLoS Pathogens; PLoS ONE; PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases
PLoS Biology; PLoS Medicine; PLoS Computational Biology; PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases
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