Sequence homology

Gene phylogeny as red and blue branches within grey species phylogeny. Top: An ancestral gene duplication produces two paralogs (histone H1.1 and 1.2). A speciation event produces orthologs in the two daughter species (human and chimpanzee). Bottom: in a separate species (E. coli), a gene has a similar function (histone-like nucleoid-structuring protein) but has a separate evolutionary origin and so is an analog.

Sequence homology is the biological homology between DNA, RNA, or protein sequences, defined in terms of shared ancestry in the evolutionary history of life. Two segments of DNA can have shared ancestry because of three phenomena: either a speciation event (orthologs), or a duplication event (paralogs), or else a horizontal (or lateral) gene transfer event (xenologs).[1]

Homology among DNA, RNA, or proteins is typically inferred from their nucleotide or amino acid sequence similarity. Significant similarity is strong evidence that two sequences are related by evolutionary changes from a common ancestral sequence. Alignments of multiple sequences are used to indicate which regions of each sequence are homologous.

  1. ^ Koonin EV (2005). "Orthologs, paralogs, and evolutionary genomics". Annual Review of Genetics. 39: 309–38. doi:10.1146/annurev.genet.39.073003.114725. PMID 16285863.