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Figure 1 | Human Genomics

Figure 1

From: Analysis and update of the human solute carrier (SLC) gene superfamily

Figure 1

Dendrogram of a representative member of each of the 55 human SLC gene families, developed using Clustal W software, to test for evolutionary readiness. To avoid clutter, we have selected only the first member of each family, although most families have two or more members. We also added two unrelated 'outlier' genes (SOD1 and CYP1A1) and two additional members of the SLC39 family (SLC39A2 and SLC39A3) as 'internal controls'. This nearest neighbour-joining (NNJ) method uses only global alignments of the entire protein sequences. In this case, although the NNJ method appears to gives various branches of different lengths, reflecting the presumed time since evolutionary divergence of the various branches of the gene tree, this tree is largely an artefact because the superfamily has mainly been pulled together by nomenclature experts who based this superfamily on function, rather than evolutionary divergence (see text).

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