Stephen Matheson🌵🌲Jul 9, 2024

#Evolution is easier than we think, and one great way to see why is to look at what we know about #proteinevolution.

First stop: define "Protein Universe" and "Protein Space."

https://sfmatheson.blogspot.com/2024/07/protein-space-and-protein-universe.html

Protein Space and the Protein Universe: Introduction

Show threadDavid SchnettlerMay 6, 2024
In this project, we screened de novo designed protein libraries without natural ancestry for function, using #microfluidic droplets - and massively enriched short, truncated protein fragments. Turns out that these ≈ 40- to 60-residue fragments oligomerize to form a dynamic, catalytically proficient assembly, just as primordial peptides might have formed early enzymes during the prebiotic events that led to the #OriginOfLife! #ProteinEvolution
David SchnettlerApr 2, 2024

🎉 Excited to share that I've been awarded the NOMIS-ETH Postdoctoral Fellowship to do research on the origin of life! Starting this September, I'll join the Panke group at the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering (D-BSSE) in Basel and the Centre for Origin and Prevalence of Life (COPL) of ETH Zürich. I'm very grateful to the NOMIS Foundation for this incredible opportunity! 🌱🔬 #OriginOfLife #ProteinEvolution

https://copl.ethz.ch/news/COPL-news-channel/2024/03/2024-cohort-of-the-nomis-eth-fellows.html

2024 Cohort of the NOMIS-ETH Fellows

Stephen Matheson🌵🌲Aug 5, 2023

Following up on yesterday's post about the vast universe of protein sequence space. I mentioned Dan Dennett's brilliant Library of Mendel, itself a subset of the famous Library of Babel.

Today I go more deliberately through the Library of Babel concept, and rename the protein library to The Library of Maynard Smith. (Frances Arnold at Caltech already did that, more than 10 years ago!)

#EvolutionIsEasy
#ProteinEvolution
#blaugust2023
#scienceblogging
#AdaptiveWalk

https://sfmatheson.blogspot.com/2023/08/contemplating-libraries-in-biology-not.html

Contemplating libraries in biology. Not that kind. Not that one either.

Show threadStephen Matheson🌵🌲Aug 5, 2023

Yet evolution has found thousands of functional proteins, some marvels of design.

Evolution is easy.

2/2

#proteinevolution
#blaugust2023

https://sfmatheson.blogspot.com/2023/08/the-library-of-possible-proteins-is.html

The library of possible proteins is beyond vast. Does this cause us to view evolution as harder than it is?

Emile DingemansMay 22, 2023
According to the Boston Consulting Group increasing the global market share of alternative proteins from 2% to 8% by 2030 could yield an emissions reduction equivalent to decarbonising 95% of the aviation industry. #ClimateChange #proteinevolution #BCG
David SchnettlerDec 30, 2022

#introduction

Hi, I'm a biochemist enthusiastic about #enzymes, #biocatalysis and #ProteinEngineering & #ProteinEvolution.

I did my PhD with Florian Hollfelder at the #UniversityofCambridge working on #DirectedEvolution of enzymes using droplet #microfluidics. Currently, I am doing a postdoc at #ETHZurich, studying which properties determine a protein’s innovability towards new function.

Looking forward to learning about cool preprints/papers and finding a lively scientific community here!

Katherine ReiterNov 27, 2022

#InDels reshape #coenzyme specificity in #Rossmann #fold #enzymes from NAD-binding to SAM-binding

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2207965119

#proteinengineering #proteinevolution #catalysis #moleculardynamics #xraycrystallography #PNAS

Lucas C. WheelerNov 15, 2022
I'm an evolutionary biologist studying floral traits in the plant families #Plantaginaceae and #Solanaceae. I've done a lot of hopping between sub-fields. My background is in #Biochemistry and #ProteinEvolution. PhD work on the evolution of binding specificity following #GeneDuplication. Postdoctoral work on #FlowerColor #Phylogenomics #MetabolicPathway evolution and #AdaptiveIntrogression. Broader goal is understanding #EvolutionaryProcesses and outcomes across #ScalesOfBiologicalOrganization.
DowdwilsonNov 9, 2022

Research retrospective for mastodon! Here is the paper that really started it all for my lab. In it, we introduce our extremely weird, but also very useful, way of doing Hydrogen Deuterium Exchange Mass Spectromerty to study rapid protein conformational dynamics.

Since then, we've applied this technique to study #proteinevolution , support drug development in #Alzheimer's and #cancer and to improve #epitopemapping .

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ac300365u

#massspec #teammassspec #massspectrometry #science