MOLECULAR TRACES AND EVIDENCE OF EVOLUTION

Abstract

Evolution is being investigated with the aid of today’s technological advances. Evolutionary biology researches directly or indirectly may affect today and tomorrow. When evolution is mentioned, even at first Darwin’s Evolutionary Theory and phylogenetic approaches that depend on organisms’ morphological features come to mind, there are also hypotheses that see mutation and genetic drift as the genetic diversity resource in populations. Proofs that support evolution vary from rocks and bones to molecules. As living organisms’ genome sequences and proteins that are involved in common mechanisms are discovered through DNA sequence analysis, it has been answered to these questions in molecular level like what is the origin of the living organisms, which living organism is relative with another, which organisms share the common ancestor. The hypotheses like origin of the life and evolutionary history are not being able to be explained exactly as the hypothesis testing applications can not be performed in the laboratory. In this review, various theories and hypotheses related with molecular evolution are being discussed with proofs that have been obtained by tracking evolution’s molecular marks in the light of mechanisms that affect gene and genome evolution.

Keywords

• mutation
• molecular evolution
• LUCA

EVRİMİN MOLEKÜLER İZLERİ VE KANITLARI

Abstract

Evrim, günümüzde teknolojinin sağladığı olanaklarla merakla araştırılmaya devam edilen bir konudur. Evrimsel biyolojik araştırmalar, doğrudan ya da dolaylı olarak bugünü ve yarını etkileyebilmektedir. Evrim denildiğinde akla öncelikle gelen türlerin kökeniyle ilgili Darwin’in evrim teorisi ve organizmaların morfolojisini dikkate alan geleneksel filogenetik yaklaşımlar olsa da, mutasyonu ve genetik kaymayı, popülasyonlardaki genetik çeşitliliğin kaynağı olarak gören hipotezler de bulunmaktadır. Evrimi destekleyen kanıtlar kayalardan kemiklere, kemiklerden moleküllere kadar çeşitlilik göstermektedir. DNA dizileme analizleriyle canlıların genom dizilimi ve canlılardaki ortak mekanizmalarda etkili proteinler belirlendikçe canlılığın biyolojik kökeninin nereden geldiği, hangi canlının birbiri ile akraba olduğu, hangi organizmaların ortak atayı paylaştığı sorularına moleküler boyutta yanıt oluşturulabilmektedir. Yaşamın kökeni ve evrimin tarihsel olaylarıyla ilgili hipotezlerin bir kısmı, hipotezi test edecek uygulamaların laboratuvarlarda henüz yapılamaması nedeniyle tam olarak açıklanamamaktadır. Bu derlemede, gen ve genom evrimine etki eden mekanizmalar ışığında moleküler evrim ile ilgili çeşitli teori, hipotezler ve evrimin moleküler izleri takip edilerek elde edilen kanıtlar tartışılmaktadır.

Keywords

• mutasyon
• moleküler evrim
• LUCA

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