Readthrough Errors Purge Deleterious Cryptic Sequences, Facilitating the Birth of Coding Sequences

Abstract

De novo protein-coding innovations sometimes emerge from ancestrally noncoding DNA, despite the expectation that translating random sequences is overwhelmingly likely to be deleterious. The "preadapting selection" hypothesis claims that emergence is facilitated by prior, low-level translation of noncoding sequences via molecular errors. It predicts that selection on polypeptides translated only in error is strong enough to matter and is strongest when erroneous expression is high. To test this hypothesis, we examined noncoding sequences located downstream of stop codons (i.e., those potentially translated by readthrough errors) in Saccharomyces cerevisiae genes. We identified a class of "fragile" proteins under strong selection to reduce readthrough, which are unlikely substrates for co-option. Among the remainder, sequences showing evidence of readthrough translation, as assessed by ribosome profiling, encoded C-terminal extensions with higher intrinsic structural disorder, supporting the preadapting selection hypothesis. The cryptic sequences beyond the stop codon, rather than spillover effects from the regular C-termini, are primarily responsible for the higher disorder. Results are robust to controlling for the fact that stronger selection also reduces the length of C-terminal extensions. These findings indicate that selection acts on 30 UTRs in Saccharomyces cerevisiae to purge potentially deleterious variants of cryptic polypeptides, acting more strongly in genes that experience more readthrough errors.