Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Evidence Of Positive Selection In Mitochondrial Complexes I And V Of The African Elephant., Tabitha M. Finch, Nan Zhao, Dmitry Korkin, Katy H. Frederick, Lori S. Eggert

College of Veterinary Medicine Publications and Scholarship

As species evolve, they become adapted to their local environments. Detecting the genetic signature of selection and connecting that to the phenotype of the organism, however, is challenging. Here we report using an integrative approach that combines DNA sequencing with structural biology analyses to assess the effect of selection on residues in the mitochondrial DNA of the two species of African elephants. We detected evidence of positive selection acting on residues in complexes I and V, and we used homology protein structure modeling to assess the effect of the biochemical properties of the selected residues on the enzyme structure. Given …