They are a ferredoxin fold that binds iron-sulfur compounds, and a “Rossmann” fold, which binds nucleotides (the building blocks of DNA and RNA). The Rutgers team focused on two protein “folds” that are likely the first structures in early metabolism. “We think we have found the building blocks of life – the Lego set that led, ultimately, to the evolution of cells, animals and plants.” Falkowski, ENIGMA principal investigator and a distinguished professor at Rutgers University–New Brunswick who leads the Environmental Biophysics and Molecular Ecology Laboratory. “We think life was built from very small building blocks and emerged like a Lego set to make cells and more complex organisms like us,” said senior author Paul G. The ENIGMA project seeks to reveal the role of the simplest proteins that catalyzed the earliest stages of life. We are building models of proteins in the lab and testing whether they can trigger reactions critical for early metabolism.”Ī Rutgers-led team of scientists called ENIGMA (Evolution of Nanomachines in Geospheres and Microbial Ancestors) is conducting the research with a NASA grant and via membership in the NASA Astrobiology Program. “Our predictions will be tested in the laboratory to better understand the origins of life on Earth and to inform how life may originate elsewhere. This work allowed us to glimpse deep in time and propose the earliest metabolic proteins,” said co-author Vikas Nanda, a professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and a resident faculty member at the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine. “We know very little about how life started on our planet.
By constructing a network connected by their roles in metabolism, this team discovered the missing pieces. The solution to the puzzle required two missing pieces, and life on Earth could not exist without them. The scientists retraced, like a many thousand piece puzzle, the evolution of enzymes (proteins) from the present to the deep past. Their study, which predicts what the earliest proteins looked like 3.5 billion to 2.5 billion years ago, is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Rutgers researchers have discovered the origins of the protein structures responsible for metabolism: simple molecules that powered early life on Earth and serve as chemical signals that NASA could use to search for life on other planets.
0 kommentar(er)
