Globins: A Case Study in Molecular Phylogeny

Abstract

Amino acid sequences are now known for several hundred globin chains, and nucleotide sequences are now known for over 100 globin genes. The sequenced globin chains and genes represent a wide range of eukaryotes, including some plants, some invertebrates, and a large number of vertebrates. The best represented mammalian order is Primates. Nucleotide sequences on extensive flanking DNA regions in the case of ε-, γ-, and ψη-globin genes for humans and other primates also exist. These comparative sequence data are a rich repository of information on the evolutionary history of both the genes and the species represented by the sequences. In the present study, as in previous ones (Goodman 1981; Goodman et al. 1984), we use the maximum parsimony algorithm to extract this evolutionary information.