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MBE Advance Access published online on February 21, 2008
Molecular Biology and Evolution, doi:10.1093/molbev/msn044
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Letter

A Test of the Null Model for 5'UTR Evolution Based on GC-Content

Max Reuter*, Jan Engelstädter*,1, Pierre Fontanillas{dagger} and Laurence D. Hurst{ddagger}

* The Galton Laboratory, Department of Biology, University College London, UK
{dagger} Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard Cambridge MA, USA
{ddagger} Department of Biology and Biochemistry, University of Bath, UK
1 Present address: Institute for Integrative Biology, ETH Zurich, Switzerland

Corresponding author: The Galton Laboratory, Department of Biology, University College London, 4 Stephenson Way, London NW1 2HE, UK, email m.reuter{at}ucl.ac.uk, phone +44-20-7679 5095, fax +44-20-7679 5052

Received for publication September 24, 2007. Revision received January 24, 2008. Accepted for publication February 7, 2008.

Eukaryotic messenger RNAs are headed by a stretch on non-coding sequence, the 5' untranslated region (UTR). It has been proposed that the length of 5'UTRs is selectively neutral and evolves under a process of stochastic destruction and recruitment of core promoter elements, combined with selection against the premature initiation of translation. We test this null model by investigating whether 5'UTR length varies with genomic GC-content, an implicit prediction of the model. Using simulations, we show that the null model predicts a positive relationship between GC-content and UTR length for genes regulated by a TATA-box. While this prediction is borne out qualitatively in genomic data from yeast, fruitflies, and humans, we find marked quantitative discrepancies. We conclude that UTR length may be shaped to some degree by the forces considered in the null model, but that the model fails to provide a complete explanation for UTR length evolution.

Key Words: UTR • TATA box • mutation • selection


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