Evolutionary rate analysis of aminoacyl tRNA synthetases

Eukaryotic nuclear genomes often encode distinct sets of protein translation machinery for function in the cytosol vs. organelles (mitochondria and plastids). This phenomenon raises questions about why multiple translation systems are maintained even though they are capable of comparable functions, and whether they evolve differently depending on the compartment where they operate. These questions are particularly interesting in land plants because translation machinery, including aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases (aaRS), is often dual-targeted to both the plastids and mitochondria. These two organelles have quite different metabolisms, with much higher rates of translation in plastids to supply the abundant, rapid-turnover proteins required for photosynthesis. Previous studies have indicated that plant organellar aaRS evolve more slowly compared to mitochondrial aaRS in other eukaryotes that lack plastids. Thus, we investigated the evolution of nuclear-encoded organellar and cytosolic transla..., Datasets are multiple sequence alignments and gene trees for aminoacyl tRNA-synthetase enzyme amino acid sequences curated from publically available data. These data were used to evaluate evolutionary rate. I've also included code used for analysis. , Python3 Jupyter Notebooks MEGA11