Evolution game: which came first, the receptor or the ligand?

Abstract

On the basis of a bioinformatic approach, we suggest that in invertebrates many ligands interact with a single, ancestral and generalized receptor driving ligand evolution. In vertebrates, on the other hand, the occurrence of gene/genome duplications induced the shift to a ligand-directed evolution of receptors.

Keywords

• cytokines
• cytokine receptors
• ligand-receptor evolution