How do similarities in amino acids of their proteins provide an information about the evolutionary relationship of two different species?

Classification by Molecular Sequences

Organisms can also be classified based on their molecular sequences (molecular phylogeny). This is the branch of phylogeny that analyses genetic, hereditary molecular differences, predominately in DNA sequences, to gain information on an organism’s evolutionary relationships. This is also called cladistics.

• All living organisms on Earth are thought to have one common ancestor.
• If two species have a similar set of proteins, chromosomes or DNA sequences, it provides evidence that they share a recent common ancestor.
• Please note that ‘recent’ in evolutionary terms can be hundreds of thousands of years!
• We can compare DNA sequences of different species and look at the similarities between the bases.
• The greater the difference in DNA sequences, more time is presumed to have passed since they shared a common ancestor.

One protein that is commonly studied in attempting to determine the relatedness of species is cytochrome-c. This is a protein that is used in the electron transport chain of cellular respiration. It has changed very little over millions of years of evolution so the more similarity there is between the cytochrome-c from different species, the more recently the species have evolved from a common ancestor. The table below shows the molecular homology of cytochrome-c between different species.

Using the table, organise the species from most closely to least related to humans.

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Multivariate linear regression models between amino acids and evolutionary rates. (A) There are 273 genome pairs belong to 18 phyla. Corresponding genome pair count and the average R2 for the multivariate linear regression between amino acid compositions and evolutionary rates were shown. (B) For 273 organisms, the total decision coefficient R2 ranged in 0~0.6 with P is less than 0.05. (C) GC content influences the total decision coefficient R2 for the multivariate linear regression between amino acid compositions and evolutionary rates. (D) Genome size negatively correlates with the total decision coefficient R2. (E) The evolutionary rates for proteins in the five model organisms and corresponding average are: 0.26, 0.11,0.13,0.16, and 0.15.

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