conserved

(noun)

In biology, conserved sequences are similar or identical sequences that occur within nucleic acid sequences (such as RNA and DNA sequences), protein sequences, protein structures.

Related Terms

Examples of conserved in the following topics:

  • MreB and Determinants of Cell Morphology

    • The conservation of protein structure suggests the common ancestry of the cytoskeletal elements formed by actin, found in eukaryotes, and MreB, found in prokaryotes.
    • MreB is a protein found in bacteria that has been identified as a homologue of actin, as indicated by similarities in tertiary structure and conservation of active site peptide sequence.
    • The conservation of protein structure suggests the common ancestry of the cytoskeletal elements formed by actin and MreB, found in prokaryotes.

  • Aquifex, Thermocrinis, and Related Bacteria

    • Comparative genomic studies have identified six conserved signature indels (CSIs) that are specific for the species from the phylum Aquificae and provide potential molecular markers for it.
    • However, a close relationship of the Aquificae to Thermotogae, and the deep branching of Aquificae, is not supported by phylogenetic studies based upon other gene/protein sequences and also by conserved signature indels in several highly-conserved universal proteins.

  • Alphaproteobacteria

    • Comparative analyses of the sequenced genomes have also led to discovery of many conserved indels in widely distributed proteins and whole proteins (i.e. signature proteins) that are distinctive characteristics of either all Alphaproteobacteria, or their different main orders (viz.
    • Phylogenetic analyses and conserved indels in large numbers of other proteins provide evidence that Alphaproteobacteria have branched off later than most other phyla and Classes of Bacteria with the exception of Betaproteobacteria and Gammaproteobacteria.

  • Medical Importance of Viruses

    • Amid this diversity, viruses with similar genome organizations exhibit major conserved themes in their replication strategies.
    • Because of the conserved nature of a virus's intracellular life cycle, fundamental advances in our understanding of replication have come from viruses that infect both animal and non-animal hosts.

  • Homologs, Orthologs, and Paralogs

    • Sequence regions that are homologous are also called conserved.
    • This is not to be confused with conservation in amino acid sequences in which the amino acid at a specific position has been substituted with a different one with functionally equivalent physicochemical properties.
    • However, function is not always conserved.
    • This is the sequence alignment of a homologous protein from two different species The "*" represent a conserved amino acid in the two proteins.

  • Aquificales and Thermotogales

    • Comparative genomic studies have identified six conserved signature indels (CSIs) that are specific for the species from the phylum Aquificae and provide potential molecular markers for this phylum.
    • However, a close relationship of the Aquificae to Thermotogae and the deep branching of Aquificae is not supported by phylogenetic studies based upon other gene/protein sequences and also by conserved signature indels in several highly conserved universal proteins.
    • However, a recent comparative genomic study has identified large numbers of conserved signature indels (CSIs) in important proteins that are specific for either all Thermotogae species or a number of its sub-groups.

  • Chlamydiae

    • The species from this group can be distinguished from all other bacteria by the presence of conserved indels in a number of proteins such as RNA polymerase alpha subunit, Gyrase B, Elongation factor-Tu and Elongation factor-P, and by large numbers of signature proteins that are uniquely present in different chlamydiae species.
    • Phylogeny and shared presence of conserved indels in proteins such as RNA polymerase Beta subunit and lysyl-tRNA synthetase indicate that Verrucomicrobia are the closest free-living relatives of these parasitic organisms.

  • Energy Conservation and Autotrophy in Archaea

  • Nucleic Acid Sequencing and rRNA Analysis

    • The 16SrRNA gene is used for phylogenetic studies, as it is highly conserved between different species of bacteria and archaea.
    • In addition to highly conserved primer binding sites, 16S rRNA gene sequences contain hypervariable regions that can provide species-specific signature sequences useful for bacterial identification.

  • Antimicrobial Peptides

    • These evolutionarily conserved peptides are usually positively charged and have both a hydrophobic and hydrophilic side that enables the molecule to be soluble in aqueous environments yet also enter lipid-rich membranes.