4-Billion-Year-Old Fossil Proteins Resurrected

[Buster's Uncle]

4-Billion-Year-Old Fossil Proteins Resurrected
LiveScience.com
By Tia Ghose, Staff Writer  10 hours ago
 

The individual molecules within early Earth's primordial soup that form the basis of life likely developed in response to natural selection.

 
Researchers have reconstructed the structure of 4-billion-year-old proteins.

The primeval proteins, described today (Aug. 8 ) in the journal Structure, could reveal new insights about the origin of life, said study co-author José Manuel Sanchez Ruíz, a physical chemist at the University of Granada in Spain.

Exactly how life emerged on Earth more than 3 billion years ago is a mystery. Some scientists believe that lightning struck the primordial soup in ammonia-rich oceans, producing the complex molecules that formed the precursors to life. Others believe that chemical reactions at deep-sea hydrothermal vents gave rise to cell membranes and simple cellular pumps. And still others believe that space rocks brought the raw ingredients for life — or perhaps even life itself — to Earth.

But it's difficult to recreate events that happened so far in the distant past.

Sanchez Ruiz and his colleagues decided to study a class of proteins called thioredoxins, which perform dozens of cellular functions in organisms across all three domains of life: Archaea, Eukaryotes and Bacteria. The proteins' broad functionality and presence in all life forms suggests they have primordial roots, the researchers said.

The team analyzed all the differences between the versions of the proteins found in organisms in each domain, and mapped those differences to the dates when the organisms are believed to have diverged.

Using that information, they determined the likely amino acid sequence of the ancient thioredoxin proteins, which spawned all other versions and existed in the most primitive life.

They then recreated the protein in the lab. The "fossil" protein was incredibly stable, bound to many different chemicals and functioned well in a highly acidic environment.

"That makes a lot of sense because 4 billion years ago, many people think that the temperature was high and the oceans were acidic," Sanchez Ruíz told LiveScience.

Of course, there are no traces of these ancient proteins, so there's no way to know for sure how closely the reconstructed proteins resemble the originals.

"There is no way to make absolutely certain unless we invent some kind of time machine," Sanchez Ruíz said. "But we know that the properties we measure for these proteins are consistent with what we would expect of 4-billion-year-old proteins."

http://news.yahoo.com/4-billion-old-fossil-proteins-resurrected-170654902.html

"reconstructed the structure" is a bit awkward...

[Unorthodox]

Is this a good idea?  I mean, if the bad movies have taught me ANYTHING, it's you don't go messin with fossils

[Buster's Uncle]

Things don't come to life and escape the lab nearly as often as in the movies...

[Unorthodox]

Yeah, you say that, then there's the lab down south that shut down thanks to a missing vial of the most deadly nerve gas known to man.  Sure they SAY they found it, but missing soldiers, thousands of birds and sheep in the desert die all within a month...right, I'm supposed to BELIEVE them. 


(google dugway missing, I know it sounds like bad movie, but it's real.  Welcome to Utah) 

[Buster's Uncle]

No.  I gather there's no coming to Utah well.  You end up in Utah.

[Unorthodox]

Well, nasa also crashed stardust and genesis into the desert here, releasing god knows what space crap they were collecting into the desert.  I swear, this is ground zero for the zombipocalypse. 

Still want to know what baffoon decided it was a good idea to attempt to catch space probes with hooks sticking out of helicopters. 

[Buster's Uncle]

Google?  NASA's website?