Structural and evolutionary tunnels of pairwise residue-interaction symmetries connect different structural classes of proteins

Studying all non-redundant proteins in 76 most-commonly found structural domains, we decipher latent patterns that characterize acceptable and unacceptable symmetries in residue-residue interactions in functional proteins. Cutting across the structural classes, a select set of pairwise interactions are found to be universally favored by geometrical and evolutionary constraints; these symmetric interactions are termed ‘acceptable’ structural and evolutionary tunnels, respectively. An equally small subset of residue-residue interactions, the ‘unacceptable’ structural and evolutionary tunnels, is found to be universally disliked by structural and evolutionary constraints. Non-trivial overlapping is detected among acceptable structural and evolutionary tunnels, as also among unacceptable structural and evolutionary tunnels. A subset of tunnels is found to have equal relative importance, structurally and evolutionarily, in different structural classes. The MET-MET tunnel is detected to be universally most unacceptable by both structural and evolutionary constraints, whereas the ASP-LEU tunnel was found to be the closest to be called universally most acceptable. Residual populations in structural and evolutionary tunnels are found to be independent of stereochemical properties of individual residues. It is argued with examples that tunnels are emergent features that connect extent of symmetry in residue-residue interactions to the level of quaternary structural organization.