Protein evolution follows modular principle
Thursday, July 24, 2014 - 02:01
in Biology & Nature
Similarities between proteins reveal that their great diversity has arisen from smaller building blocks. Proteins consist of long chains of 20 different amino acid building blocks that fold into a characteristic three-dimensional structure. It is noteworthy that some modules, known as protein domains, occur more frequently than others. Scientists suspect that many of these domains share a common evolutionary origin.