Were Ancestral Proteins Less Specific?

Recreating ancestral proteins.

Tracing the history of molecular changes using phylogenetic methods can provide powerful insights into how and why molecules work the way they do. It is now possible to recreate inferred ancestral proteins in the laboratory and study the function of these molecules. This provides a unique opportunity to study the paths and the mechanisms of functional change during molecular evolution. What ins...

Were Early Agriculturalists Less Healthy than Food-collectors?

Locomotion in Extinct Giant Kangaroos: Were Sthenurines Hop-Less Monsters?

Sthenurine kangaroos (Marsupialia, Diprotodontia, Macropodoidea) were an extinct subfamily within the family Macropodidae (kangaroos and rat-kangaroos). These "short-faced browsers" first appeared in the middle Miocene, and radiated in the Plio-Pleistocene into a diversity of mostly large-bodied forms, more robust than extant forms in their build. The largest (Procoptodon goliah) had an estimat...

Using Resurrected Ancestral Proviral Proteins to Engineer Virus Resistance.

Proviral factors are host proteins hijacked by viruses for processes essential for virus propagation such as cellular entry and replication. Pathogens and their hosts co-evolve. It follows that replacing a proviral factor with a functional ancestral form of the same protein could prevent viral propagation without fatally compromising organismal fitness. Here, we provide proof of concept of this...

Reconstructing Domain Compositions of Ancestral Multi-domain Proteins

Inferring positional homologs with common intervals of sequences On genome evolution with accumulated change and innovation Sorting by translocations via reversals theory Michal Ozery-Flato and Ron Shamir Inferring gene orders from gene maps using the breakpoint distance