Scientists Retrace Evolution - Proof in Protein

Why is that?

Never came across it, I guess.

Thanks Wolf_ODonnell for breaking it down. I may/may not be able to access Science Journal from campus. But I am not making any promises, so don't expect anything.

Re: Scientists Retrace Evolution - Proof in Protein

A clever ploy this Satan has pulled off there -- the tricky bastard!

Re: Scientists Retrace Evolution - Proof in Protein


You must admit, God does get his money's worth out of him.

What journal did this appear in, I can get it from the library, I am at campus right now.

Science

How do I go about loking for this on the Science web-page? I searched for 'evolution' and, as you can guess, got 50 zillion returns.
Then I searched for 'evolution+protein', then 'evolution+molecule' and I can not find this article. Science is a huge journal, how do I find this article? Search by the date? How do I do that?

Re: Scientists Retrace Evolution - Proof in Protein

On a more serious note than my last post, I find sentences like the following incredibly frustrating: "[...] Thornton and Jamie Bridgham, a postdoctoral scientist in his lab, used state-of-the-art computational and molecular techniques to re-create the ancient progenitors of an important human protein."

They used state-of-the-art computational techniques? Well, Thornton and bridgham, when you're finished congratulating yourself on your fancy computer program, maybe you can tell me what it did. Then I could develop an informed opinion on whether the proteins it found really were the ancestors of the modern version, and whether I should take your whole approach seriously. The way it is written, the article does not allow me to make up my mind about the research reported. It all turns on the specifics behind those magic words, "state-of-the-art computational and molecular techniques".

This article is really impossible to find, cant I just get some random other interesting article?
EDIT: I have found quite a few articles on 'molecular evolution'

In general, the most effective search is to go to the publishing magazine's homepage and look for the authors. Specifically, going to www.sciencemag.org and searching for papers by the authors "Thornton" and "Bridgham" yielded two papers. The first of these is the one we want.

Here you go

Well, if your sure that's the one you want...

Sorry to disapoint:



Or $10.00 for continuous 24hrs hours access to this paper. That is, you only get to access it for 24hrs, and no more. Seems like a bloody rip off.

Anyway, I found some other interesting articles, but the computer lab is shutting down, so it has to wait for another day, sorry, I tried.

Other articles of interest may or may not be:

Evolution of the Protein Repertoire
Most proteins have been formed by gene duplication, recombination, and divergence. Proteins of known structure can be matched to about 50% of genome sequences, and these data provide a quantitative description and can suggest hypotheses about the origins of these processes.

PROTEIN EVOLUTION:On the Ancestry of Barrels
Most proteins consist of several domains linked together in a single polypeptide chain, and many of these proteins have evolved by gene duplication and fusion. Miles and Davies discuss the study by Lang et al., who show that this type of protein evolution may also occur in b/a barrel proteins, a common single-domain protein fold. Other single domain proteins may have arisen from similar evolutionary mechanisms.

Evolution of proteolytic enzymes
Proteolytic enzymes have many physiological functions, ranging from generalized protein digestion to more specific regulated processes such as the activation of zymogens, blood coagulation and the lysis of fibrin clots, the release of hormones and pharmacologically active peptides from precursor proteins, and the transport of secretory proteins across membranes. They are present in all forms of living organisms. Comparisons of amino acid sequences, three-dimensional structures, and enzymatic reaction mechanisms of proteases indicate that there are distinct families of these proteins. Changes in molecular structure and function have accompanied the evolution of proteolytic enzymes and their inhibitors, each having relatively simple roles in primitive organisms and more diverse and more complex functions in higher organisms.

Mapping the Protein Universe
The comparison of the three-dimensional shapes of protein molecules poses a complex algorithmic problem. Its solution provides biologists with computational tools to organize the rapidly growing set of thousands of known protein shapes, to identify new types of protein architecture, and to discover unexpected evolutionary relations, reaching back billions of years, between protein molecules. Protein shape comparison also improves tools for identifying gene functions in genome databases by defining the essential sequence-structure features of a protein family. Finally, an exhaustive all-on-all shape comparison provides a map of physical attractor regions in the abstract shape space of proteins, with implications for the processes of protein folding and evolution.

Relating Three-Dimensional Structures to Protein Networks Provides Evolutionary Insights
Most studies of protein networks operate on a high level of abstraction, neglecting structural and chemical aspects of each interaction. Here, we characterize interactions by using atomic-resolution information from three-dimensional protein structures. We find that some previously recognized relationships between network topology and genomic features (e.g., hubs tending to be essential proteins) are actually more reflective of a structural quantity, the number of distinct binding interfaces. Subdividing hubs with respect to this quantity provides insight into their evolutionary rate and indicates that additional mechanisms of network growth are active in evolution (beyond effective preferential attachment through gene duplication).

Rates of protein evolution: a function of amino acid composition
Conservation of secondary and tertiary structure in proteins suggests that rates of sequence variation reflect differences in the total number of amino acid replacements that are compatible with preservation of structure. Consequently, rates of sequence variation depend on whether the constituent amino acids of individual proteins are, over-all, more subject or less subject to evolutionary substitution than normal. Such rates correlate well with a mutability term based on amino acid composition.

Evolution of Key Cell Signaling and Adhesion Protein Families Predates Animal Origins
The evolution of animals from a unicellular ancestor involved many innovations. Choanoflagellates, unicellular and colonial protozoa closely related to Metazoa, provide a potential window into early animal evolution. We have found that choanoflagellates express representatives of a surprising number of cell signaling and adhesion protein families that have not previously been isolated from nonmetazoans, including cadherins, C-type lectins, several tyrosine kinases, and tyrosine kinase signaling pathway components. Choanoflagellates have a complex and dynamic tyrosine phosphoprotein profile, and cell proliferation is selectively affected by tyrosine kinase inhibitors. The expression in choanoflagellates of proteins involved in cell interactions in Metazoa demonstrates that these proteins evolved before the origin of animals and were later co-opted for development.

MOLECULAR EVOLUTION:Resurrected Proteins Reveal Their Surprising History
In a paper published online in Science this week (www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1142819), researchers report that they resurrected a protein from ancient fish that swam the oceans some 450 million years ago and retraced the steps by which two proteins diverged from their ancient common ancestor.

BIOCHEMISTRY:A Missing Link in Membrane Protein Evolution
Discerning the orientation of subunits of an unusual bacterial membrane protein suggests how the particular topology of other membrane proteins may have evolved.

What do you expect? It's Science. These journals can be pretty expensive, especially Science, any of the Nature journals and I think Cell.

By the way, if you pay $10.00 for access, you can print it off. That's not bad, seeing as some journals cost $1295 for print and online subscription.

... or save a local copy. I agree $10 per article is reasonable for that.

If I remember correctly, Nature articles cost $35.

One good thing about Harvard is that you can access their e-journals online, if you have a pin number.
I have a pin number, so later this week I'll see if I can find the Science paper.

...And then distribute it to us for free! Mwahahahahahaha!!!!

Will do!

I was joking; but I suppose if you want to you could.