Study Reveals That How Protein Might Had Played A Major Role In The Origin Of Life

The mystery of how life came to be on this planet has yet to be fully addressed, but science is rapidly approaching all the time towards it and a recent study reveals the shapes of the proteins that may have been responsible. To commence, the researchers opted to start with the assumption that life as humans recognize it depended on the collection and use of energy. That energy would have originated from the sky, in the form of solar radiation, or during deep inside Earth itself, as heat seeping via hydrothermal vents at the base of the ancient seas.

Microbiologist Yana Bromberg, from Rutgers University-New Brunswick in New Jersey said that even while the proteins themselves may not have been identical, they discovered that the metal-binding cores of emerging proteins are. They also noticed that, like Lego blocks, these metal-binding cores are commonly formed up of repetitive substructures. Surprisingly, similar blocks were discovered in other parts of the proteins, not just the metal-binding cores, as well as in many additional proteins not included in their analysis.

Nearly like a molecular family tree project, the team was managed to discover evolutions in protein folds, the forms taken by proteins as they acquire biologically active, that may have formed the proteins researchers know today. The study also suggests that biologically functioning peptides, which are smaller copies of proteins, may have existed before the first proteins, that dated 3.8 billion years. All of this contributes to their perspective of how life began.