Evolutionary biologists have always used a broad range of modern organisms to infer the characteristics that ancestral organisms may have possessed

Question

Genomic sequences are now available for an increasing number of species, and scientists studying evolutionary processes can take advantage of this enormous amount of data to bring evolution into the arena of molecular studies. By aligning the sequences of homologous genes and looking for regions of similarity and where changes have occurred, it is possible to infer the sequence of the ancestral gene.
A. What term is used to describe the changes in gene sequences that have occurred? How can we use what we know about this process to construct a timeline showing when various sequence changes occurred and when they led to the modern sequences that we know today?
B. It is possible to express an ancestral gene sequence in modern organisms and subsequently compare the function of its product with that of the modern protein. Why might this approach give misleading conclusions?

Answer 1

A. Changes in gene sequence occur through mutation. Mutations accumulate over time, occurring independently and at different sites in each gene lineage. Homologous genes that diverged recently will differ only slightly; genes that diverged long ago will differ more. Knowing the average mutation rate, you can estimate the time that has elapsed since the different versions of the gene diverged. By seeing how closely the various members of the family of homologous genes resemble one another, you can draw up a family tree, showing the sequence of lineage splits that lead from the ancestral gene to its many modern descendants. Suppose this family tree shows that family members A and B diverged from one another long ago, but that C diverged from B more recently; and suppose that at a certain site in the gene, A and B have the same sequence but C is different. Then, it is likely that the sequence of A and B is ancestral, while that of C reflects a recent mutation that has occurred in the lineage of C alone.
B. Although an inferred ancestral sequence can be reconstructed and the protein expressed, you would be placing an inferred, ancient protein in the context of a modern cell. If there are important interacting partners for the modern protein, there is a chance they may not recognize the ancestral protein, and therefore any information about its function may be inaccurate.