Functional consequences of reductive protein evolution in a minimal eukaryotic genome
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Microsporidia are parasites with the smallest known eukaryotic genomes. Taking a comparative genomic approach, we identified microsporidia orthologs of budding yeast proteins and show that the median microsporidia protein is 21% shorter than its yeast counterpart. Microsporidia proteins are shorter due to reduced domain lengths, diminished linker lengths, and domain loss. On average, 34% of microsporidia orthologs have lost C-terminal residues essential for function in yeast, including 13 essential domains lost per genome. Using yeast complementation assays, we show that most microsporidia proteins cannot complement their yeast orthologs, and the ability to complement is about 3-fold less than that observed for the orthologs of Rozella allomycis, a relative of microsporidia. Microsporidia proteins that do not complement are shorter in length than their yeast orthologs. Altogether, our results demonstrate the drastic reduction of microsporidia proteins and show that these reductions have resulted in a diminished ability to function within the context of yeast.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| 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 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 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 source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), 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".