%0 Journal Article
%T The planetary biology of cytochrome P450 aromatases
%A Eric A Gaucher
%A Logan G Graddy
%A Tang Li
%A Rosalia CM Simmen
%A Frank A Simmen
%A David R Schreiber
%A David A Liberles
%A Christine M Janis
%A Steven A Benner
%J BMC Biology
%D 2004
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1741-7007-2-19
%X Here, we report an example of such an expansion, where tools from planetary biology were used to analyze three genes from the pig Sus scrofa that encode cytochrome P450 aromatases¨Cenzymes that convert androgens into estrogens. The evolutionary history of the vertebrate aromatase gene family was reconstructed. Transition redundant exchange silent substitution metrics were used to interpolate dates for the divergence of family members, the paleontological record was consulted to identify changes in physiology that correlated in time with the change in molecular behavior, and new aromatase sequences from peccary were obtained. Metrics that detect changing function in proteins were then applied, including KA/KS values and those that exploit structural biology. These identified specific amino acid replacements that were associated with changing substrate and product specificity during the time of presumed adaptive change. The combined analysis suggests that aromatase paralogs arose in pigs as a result of selection for Suoidea with larger litters than their ancestors, and permitted the Suoidea to survive the global climatic trauma that began in the Eocene.This combination of bioinformatics analysis, molecular evolution, paleontology, cladistics, global climatology, structural biology, and organic chemistry serves as a paradigm in planetary biology. As the geological, paleontological, and genomic records improve, this approach should become widely useful to make systems biology statements about high-level function for biomolecular systems.The emergence of complete genomes for many organisms, including humans, has created the need for hypotheses concerning the "function" of specific genes that encode specific proteins. While "function" is interpreted by different workers in different ways [1], Darwinian theory (by axiom) requires that the term be connected to fitness; natural selection is the only mechanism admitted by theory to generate functional behavior in a living syst
%U http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7007/2/19