Comprehensive analysis of all evolutionary paths between two divergent PDZ domain specificities
Bibliographic record
Abstract
To understand the molecular evolution of functional diversity in protein families, we comprehensively investigated the consequences of all possible mutation combinations separating two peptide-binding domains with highly divergent specificities. We analyzed the Erbin PDZ domain (Erbin-PDZ), which exhibits canonical type I specificity, and a synthetic Erbin-PDZ variant (E-14) that differs at six positions and exhibits an atypical specificity that closely resembles that of the natural Pdlim4 PDZ domain (Pdlim4-PDZ). We constructed a panel of 64 PDZ domains covering all possible transitions between Erbin-PDZ and E-14 (i.e., the panel contained variants with all possible combinations of either the Erbin-PDZ or E-14 sequence at the six differing positions). We assessed the specificity profiles of the 64 PDZ domains using a C-terminal phage-displayed peptide library containing all possible genetically encoded heptapeptides. The specificity profiles clustered into six distinct groups, showing that intermediate domains can be nodes for the evolution of divergent functions. Remarkably, three substitutions were sufficient to convert the specificity of Erbin-PDZ to that of Pdlim4-PDZ, whereas Pdlim4-PDZ contains 71 differences relative to Erbin-PDZ. X-ray crystallography revealed the structural basis for specificity transition: a single substitution in the center of the binding site, supported by contributions from auxiliary substitutions, altered the main chain conformation of the peptide ligand to resemble that of ligands bound to Pdlim4-PDZ. Our results show that a very small set of mutations can dramatically alter protein specificity, and these findings support the hypothesis whereby complex protein functions evolve by gene duplication followed by cumulative mutations.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".