Post 19: Protien function evolution 🧬

Just as species evolve through the gradual accumulation of changes over time, so do proteins. Here’s a nice example with the fluorescent proteins from a coral. To emit light of a certain color, specific amino acids must be present and interact. To get an idea of what the ancestors of these proteins were like and to infer the original color, the technique of “ancestral reconstruction” can be used. This allows us to observe how the proteins transitioned from green to red through mutations that allowed the proteins to explore the “sequence space” of this protein family.

Refs:

1. (the original original) Evolution of Coral Pigments Recreated
2. To learn more about ancestral reconstruction
3. To learn more about sequence space
4. A detailed example of how evolution occurs through mutations in fluorescent proteins