Abstract
BACKGROUND: Little is known why proteins and RNAs exhibit half-lives varying over several magnitudes. Despite many efforts, a conclusive link between half-lives and gene function could not be established suggesting that other determinants may influence these molecular attributes. RESULTS: Here, I find that with increasing gene age there is a gradual and significant increase of protein and RNA half-lives, protein structure, and other molecular attributes that tend to affect protein abundance. These observations are accommodated in a hypothesis which posits that new genes at 'birth' are not optimized and thus their products exhibit low half-lives and less structure but continuous mutagenesis eventually improves these attributes. Thus, the protein and RNA products of the oldest genes obtained their high degrees of stability and structure only after billions of years while the products of younger genes had less time to be optimized and are therefore less stable and structured. Because more stable proteins with lower turnover require less transcription to maintain the same level of abundance, reduced transcription-associated mutagenesis (TAM) would fixate the changes by increasing gene conservation. CONCLUSIONS: Consequently, the currently observed diversity of molecular attributes is a snapshot of gene products being at different stages along their temporal path of optimization.