What is Homology?
Homology is classifying organisms based on common traits and a shared ancestor. Charles Darwin commonly referred to animals as having a homologous morphologies, which means that they have similar body shapes (1). This can also be applied to proteins or DNA as well. Across different species both polymers can be compared by aligning the sequences of protein or DNA. This can show how similar protein or DNA is across two different species.
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ALDH2 Homology
The ALDH2 protein has many homologs across different species. Homologene was able to identify approximately 281 homologous proteins in other species. BLASTp was also used to directly compare the protein sequence of ALDH2 to other species proteome.
Homo sapien (Human) |
Drosophila melanogaster (fruit fly) |
Caenorhabditis elegans |
Discussion
There were numerous species that shared a homologous protein to ALDH2. There are numerous species that could act as a model organism for ALDH2. This gene is well conserved because its enzymatic function is essential for alcohol degradation. Some of these organisms may have alternate pathways to metabolize alcohol. For example, Saccharomyces cerevisiae (yeast) is able to form ethanol as an alternative form of respiration, but this ability may cause the alcohol metabolic pathway to function significantly different than humans. Therefore, mice are the best model because they process alcohol in a similar manner as humans.
References:
1) https://www.cell.com/current-biology/comments/S0960-9822(04)00287-8
Pictures:
Header:https://www.smv.org/learn/blog/post/how-many-species-are-left-be-discovered
All other images are hyperlinked
1) https://www.cell.com/current-biology/comments/S0960-9822(04)00287-8
Pictures:
Header:https://www.smv.org/learn/blog/post/how-many-species-are-left-be-discovered
All other images are hyperlinked