文章基本信息

标题：Tracing whale myoglobin evolution by resurrecting ancient proteins
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作者：Yasuhiro Isogai ; Hiroshi Imamura ; Setsu Nakae 等
期刊名称：Scientific Reports
电子版ISSN：2045-2322
出版年度：2018
卷号：8
期号：1
页码：16883
DOI：10.1038/s41598-018-34984-6
语种：English
出版社：Springer Nature
摘要：Extant cetaceans, such as sperm whale, acquired the great ability to dive into the ocean depths during the evolution from their terrestrial ancestor that lived about 50 million years ago. Myoglobin (Mb) is highly concentrated in the myocytes of diving animals, in comparison with those of land animals, and is thought to play a crucial role in their adaptation as the molecular aqualung. Here, we resurrected ancestral whale Mbs, which are from the common ancestor between toothed and baleen whales (Basilosaurus), and from a further common quadrupedal ancestor between whale and hippopotamus (Pakicetus). The experimental and theoretical analyses demonstrated that whale Mb adopted two distinguished strategies to increase the protein concentration in vivo along the evolutionary history of deep sea adaptation; gaining precipitant tolerance in the early phase of the evolution, and increase of folding stability in the late phase.