Revealing the hiden mystery of Piezo: A phylogenetic study

Abstract

Piezo proteins are a group of important mechanical-responsive ion channel proteins, which play an indispensable role in the normal physiological process of the organism. Therefore, Piezo proteins have attracted many researchers to develop relevant studies. In this work, an evolutionary tree of the Piezo1 gene was constructed using the gene sequences from National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). Using MEGA, the ancestral gene sequence was constructed and the conserved and variable regions of Piezo1 protein were marked. According to the tree, the evolution of Piezo genes can be analysed, and then it is possible to predict the direction of gene mutation. The pathogenic mutation site to the corresponding regions was also mapped. Although there is still much work to be improved, the efforts to analyze the Piezo 1 gene from an evolutionary perspective is valuable, which might be helpful for future disease diagnosis and individualized therapy.