Insertions and the emergence of novel protein structure: a structure-based phylogenetic study of insertions

Background  

In protein evolution, the mechanism of the emergence of novel protein domain is still an open question. The incremental growth of protein variable regions, which was produced by stochastic insertions, has the potential to generate large and complex sub-structures. In this study, a deterministic methodology is proposed to reconstruct phylogenies from protein structures, and to infer insertion events in protein evolution. The analysis was performed on a broad range of SCOP domain families.