Evolutionary Footprinting
Evolutionary footprinting, or phylogenetic footprinting, is an approach to finding functionally important sequences in the genome that relies on detecting their high degrees of conservation across different species.
For genes that have been successfully determined within the human genome sequence, most regulatory sequences remain to be accounted for. The explanation and interpretation of genetic sequences needs more data resources and significant improvements in calculation methods for the detection of regulatory areas. Genetic or biological changes are more likely to be disruptive if they appear in functional sites, resulting in a marked difference in evolution rates between functional and non-functional genomic segments.
It is possible to deduce which portions of a gene are important by comparing the sequence of that gene with the sequence in other species. A plot showing the areas of high conservation will reflect the areas that are functional in all the test species. In theory, the more species involved in the comparison, the more stringent the result can be (i.e. the more the conserved regions will reflect truly important sequences). Care must be taken, however, to use species in which the function of the gene has not diverged excessively, or the outcome will be uninformative.
Web Resources On Evolutionary Footprinting
Phylogenetic Footprints
Algorithms for Phylogenetic Footprinting
Book Resources On Evolutionary FootprintingHuman Gene Evolution by Steven Cooper
Principles of Nuclear Structure and Function by Peter R. Cook
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