G-Quadruplex DNA Sequences Are Evolutionarily Conserved and Associated with Distinct Genomic Features in Saccharomyces cerevisiae
Figure 2
The evolutionary conservation of G4 DNA motifs between S. cerevisiae and six related yeast species.
(A) The phylogenetic tree for the seven yeast species considered in this study (not to scale). The four sensu stricto species (S. paradoxus, S. mikatae, S. kudriavzevii, S. bayanus) diverged from S. cerevisiae within the last ∼20 million years. S. castelli and S. kluyveri are considerably more distant [21]. The percent sequence identity to S. cerevisiae over the alignable regions is given in parentheses. (B) The evolutionary conservation of the 507 non-telomeric, nuclear S. cerevisiae G4 DNA motifs in sequence regions that could be aligned to at least one other genome. Significantly more G4 DNA motifs were conserved than expected by chance between S. cerevisiae and five of the six species considered. The one exception was S. kluyveri, which is the most distant and GC-rich species among the seven yeasts.