Animal Actin Phylogeny and RNA Secondary Structure Study

Animal actin is a diverse and evolutionarily ancient protein. Actin genes and their corresponding protein sequences were used to infer phylogenetic affiliations. The study indicated that several species appear to be polyphyletic and several unrelated species appear to share the same clade. Consensus actin RNA secondary structures showed that the structural features of all forms were quite distinct and different from each other. This observation supports the phylogenetic inference in which similarly named species clustered together based on their lifestyles. Consideration of actin gene geneology and consensus RNA secondary structures could be used as a possible phylogenetic marker among diverse species of the animal kingdom for large scale data analysis. In-silico study revealed variations among the groups. The percentages of long disordered regions in proteins were found to be very high in all forms. Such findings suggest that the complexity and ability to adapt in diverse habitats by species may be due to higher percentage of disordered proteins.