Biological implications of complementary hydropathy of amino acids

Abstract

The principle of complementary hydropathy predicts that peptides coded for by opposing DNA strands will bind one another because highly hydrophilic amino acids will be complemented by hydrophobic ones and vice versa. This paper provides the chemical plausibility for such interactions. It is suggested that exons coding for interacting peptides were juxtaposed and co-evolved together. Present day genes are no longer thus arranged because of duplications and exon shuffling.