Protein Evolution - Andrei Lupas
The Basic Building Blocks of Life
Proteins provide the chemical basis for all processes of life. We investigate their origin and the evolution of their folds and mechanisms of action by means of bioinformatics, biochemistry and sturctural biology.
Proteins are essential building blocks of all living cells. Indeed, life can be viewed as resulting substantially from the chemical activity of proteins. Because of their importance, it is hardly surprising that ancestors for most proteins observed today were already present at the time of the 'last common ancestor', a primordial organism from which all life on Earth is descended. How did the first proteins arise? How does their sequence of amino acids enable their chemical activity? These questions are at the centre of our scientific efforts at our Department of Protein Evolution.
Resources
Proteins are the most complex chemicals synthesized in nature and must fold into complicated three-dimensional structures to become active. This poses a particular challenge in explaining their evolution from non-living matter.
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Departmental Research Groups
Departmental Group Leader: Vikram Alva
Many proteins share detectable similarities in sequence and structure. Sequence-based comparison of modern proteins shows that they fall into only about ten thousand domain families
Departmental Group Leader: Yu-Chu Chang
We investigate the biophysical and biochemical properties of membrane proteins, focusing on their folding, stability, and function. We use a variety of techniques, including novel methods to study membrane protein stability and biochemical assays to characterize the function of bacterial proteins involved in virulence.
Departmental Group Leader: Murray Coles
Our group concentrates on protein structure determination, with a special focus on proteins involved in transmembrane signaling.
Departmental Group Leader: Stanisław Dunin-Horkawicz
We focus on the development and application of bioinformatics tools to study the function of protein-based systems from an evolutionary perspective. This approach allows us to describe present-day systems in the context of the evolutionary events that shaped them, to define their unique and conserved features, and to propose testable hypotheses.
Guest Researcher: Marcus Hartmann
Our mission is to understand and manipulate macromolecular machines and systems.
Departmental Group Leader: Birte Hernandez Alvarez
We study structure-function relationships in proteins from an evolutionary perspective.
Departmental Group Leader: Oliver Weichenrieder
‘Selfish’ RNA likely is at the origin of all life on earth and it persists today in the form of retrotransposons and RNA-based viruses. We study human LINE-1 and Alu RNAs and how these ‘molecular parasites’ copy their sequences into genomic DNA. We determine and interpret molecular structures combined with insight from biochemical approaches and cell-based assays.
