Projektnummer

0054476

Zusammenfassung

Arthropods employ a wide array of mechanisms to defend themselves against pathogens. Comparative genomics studies showed that the genes which mediate these mechanisms evolve rapidly, both on the sequence level and in copy number. Most of the proteins encoded by these genes are composed of multiple protein domains, which can be understood as structural, functional and evolutionary modules of proteins. Domains can be gained and lost in the course of protein evolution and several lines of evidence suggest that such events of modular protein evolution happened frequently in the evolutionar...