[Source: Deborah Dawn, BIO5] – A University of Arizona research team is exploring the evolutionary origins of protein structures. Their findings help us better understand how proteins evolved to carry out the instructions encoded in the genes of every living thing.
Protein molecules are made up of chains of amino acids. These chains bend and fold into a dizzying array of three-dimensional shapes and structures, depending on the order of the amino acids in a given chain. Those varied structures are part of what allow the proteins