The protein structure of the origin of life on earth may be revealed

While probing one of biology's deepest unanswered questions, a team led by Rutgers University has discovered the structure of a protein that may have led to the origin of life in the primordial soup of ancient Earth
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Researchers exploring how primitive life arose from simple inanimate materials on our planet have concluded that anything living needs to collect and use energy from sources such as the sun or hydrothermal vents
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In molecular terms, this means that the ability to transfer electrons is critical to life
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They compared all existing metal-bound protein structures to establish any common features that were present in ancestral proteins and that were diversified and passed down to create the numerous proteins we see today
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The evolution of protein structure requires understanding how new folds arise from pre-existing folds, so the researchers devised a computational approach and found that the vast majority of metal-binding proteins that exist today are somewhat similar, regardless of the type of metal they bind
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The metal-binding cores of existing proteins are indeed all similar, although the proteins themselves may not be similar, said study lead author Yana Bromberg, a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology at Rutgers University New Brunswick
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"We know very little about how life arose on this planet, and our work provides an explanation that wasn't available before," Bromberg said.
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This explanation may help us search for other planets and planetary bodies.

Editor-in-Chief

What was the first protein in the origin of life? Scientists have been trying to solve this mystery
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