Ancestral Tryptophan Synthase Reveals Functional Sophistication of Primordial Enzyme Complexes

Fossil genome reveals ancestral link.

to be female, was part of a population long diverged from humans and Neanderthals. Her approximately 3-billion-letter nuclear genome, reported in this issue of Nature, now provides a more telling glimpse into this mysterious group. It also raises previously unimagined questions about its history and relationship to Neanderthals and humans. “The whole story is incredible. It’s like a surprising ...

The favorable features of tryptophan synthase for proving Beadle and Tatum's one gene-one enzyme hypothesis.

LAST year we celebrated the 100th anniversary of the ing Beadle and Tatum’s proposal of the one gene–one enzyme relationship, our understanding of the strucbirth of George Beadle. He, with Edward Tatum, in 1941, proposed one of the major conceptual advances in tural features of genes and enzymes was insufficient to allow formulation of a finite molecular relationship. biology in the 20th centur...

Functional Concentrations of BMP4 on Differentiation of Mouse Embryonic Stem Cells to Primordial Germ Cells

When directed evolution met ancestral enzyme resurrection

The directed evolution of ancestral -resurrected- enzymes can give a new twist in protein engineering approaches towards more versatile and robust biocatalysts.

IRMPD spectroscopy of metal-ion/tryptophan complexes.

Infrared multiple-photon dissociation (IRMPD) spectroscopy is employed to obtain detailed binding information on singly charged silver and alkali metal-ion/tryptophan complexes in the gas phase. For these complexes the presence of the salt bridge (i.e. zwitterionic) tautomer can be virtually excluded, except for perhaps a few percent in the case of Li+. Two low-energy structures having the char...