Can ends justify the means? Digging deep for human fusion genes of prokaryotic origin.

Abstract

Gene fusion has been described as an important evolutionary phenomenon. This report focuses on identifying, analyzing, and tabulating human fusion proteins of prokaryotic origin. These fusion proteins are found to mimic operons, simulate protein-protein interfaces in prokaryotes, exhibiting multiple functions and alternative splicing in humans. The accredited biological functions for each of these proteins is made available as a database at http://sege.ntu.edu.sg/wester/fusion/