Novel Insights into the Evolution of Protein Networks

This article talks about how two researchers, a physicist and a bioinformatician, have successfully managed to reconstruct ancestral protein networks. Since proteins are from from the numerous combinations of 20 amino acid building blocks, it is extremely unlikely that there would be random formations of interaction between the proteins.


 The researchers used this knowledge to hypothesize that since proteins duplicate frequently during evolution, then the original and copy would interact with the same partners in the protein network. Therefore, protein networks are not newly created, instead they diverge from much simpler ancestor protein channels. After the researchers tested their hypothesis, they found that they could explain the present day networks exclusively through the theory of duplication and divergence. This principle was found to be universal in all seven data species that were collected for this study. The results of this study greatly reinforces evolutionary biology as well as interpretation of the human genome sequence.

NOS Themes:
Science is based on experiments, the researchers thought of a plausible hypothesis and when they tested it they found that their data supported their hypothesis.

Science is built up from previous knowledge, the researchers had to know about the fundamental structure of proteins before they could conduct their experiment.

http://www.biologynews.net/archives/2013/03/21/novel_insights_into_the_evolution_of_protein_networks.html