Which came first? An experiment in reconstructing primordial proteins solves a long-standing riddle
Monday, June 22, 2020 - 09:31
in Biology & Nature
What did the very first proteins look like—those that appeared on Earth around 3.7 billion years ago? Prof. Dan Tawfik of the Weizmann Institute of Science and Prof. Norman Metanis of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have reconstructed protein sequences that may well resemble those ancestors of modern proteins, and their research suggests a way that these primitive proteins could have progressed to forming living cells. Their findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).