HomePLANTS & ANIMALSMolecular & Computational biologyNew study focused on origins of life on Earth

New study focused on origins of life on Earth

A team of scientists have addressed the most profoundly unanswered questions in biology. They have discovered the structures of proteins which are responsible for the origins of life in the ancient Earth. The study had been published in the journal Science Advances.

Scientists investigated how primitive life have originated on our planet from non-living materials. Scientists found out what properties define life as we know it. They concluded that anything alive needed to collect and use energy. They have collected from the Sun or hydrothermal vents.

The ability to shuffle electrons was paramount to life, in molecular terms. The elements for electron transfer are metals and biological activities are carried out by proteins. Scientists explored the combination of the proteins that bind metals.

Scientists have compared all existing protein structures which bind metals to establish any common features. This is based on the premise that these shared features were present in ancestral proteins. These were also diversified and passed down to create the range of proteins we see today.

Evolution of protein structures shows us how new folds arose from previously existing ones. Scientists designed a computational method and found out the vast majority of currently existing metal-binding proteins are similar to the type of metal they bind to. They are similar to the organism they come from and are also functionality assigned to the protein as a whole.

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