Nature 374, 57 - 59 (02 March 2002); doi:10.1038/374057a0

Reconstructing the evolutionary history of the artiodactyl ribonuclease superfamily

Thomas M. Jermann, Jochen G. Opitz, Joseph Stackhouse & Steven A. Benner

Department of Chemistry, ETH Zürich, CH-8092 Zürich, Switzerland

THE sequences of proteins from ancient organisms can be reconstructed from the sequences of their descendants by a procedure that assumes that the descendant proteins arose from the extinct ancestor by the smallest number of independent evolutionary events ('parsimony')^1,2. The reconstructed sequences can then be prepared in the laboratory and studied^3,4. Thirteen ancient ribonucleases (RNases) have been reconstructed as intermediates in the evolution of the RNase protein family in artiodactyls (the mammal order that includes pig, camel, deer, sheep and ox)⁵. The properties of the reconstructed proteins suggest that parsimony yields plausible ancient sequences. Going back in time, a significant change in behaviour, namely a fivefold increase in catalytic activity against double-stranded RNA, appears in the RNase reconstructed for the founding ancestor of the artiodactyl lineage, which lived about 40 million years ago⁶. This corresponds to the period when ruminant digestion arose in the artiodactyls, suggests that contemporary artiodactyl digestive RNases arose from a non-digestive ancestor, and illustrates how evolutionary reconstructions can help in the understanding of physiological function within a protein family^7–9.

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