All known life forms trace back to a last universal common ancestor (LUCA) that witnessed
the onset of Darwinian evolution. One can ask questions about LUCA in various ways, the …

The origin of primordial metabolism and its expansion to form the metabolic networks extant
today represent excellent systems to study the impact of natural selection and the potential …

The post-genomic era has provided researchers with a deluge of protein sequences.
However, a significant fraction of the proteins encoded by sequenced genomes remains …

Evolutionary variations generating phenotypic adaptations and novel taxa resulted from
complex cellular activities altering genome content and expression:(i) Symbiogenetic cell …

Gene duplication followed by mutation is a classic mechanism of neofunctionalization,
producing gene families with functional diversity. In some cases, a single point mutation is …

Promiscuous enzymes and spontaneous chemical reactions can convert normal cellular
metabolites into noncanonical or damaged metabolites. These damaged metabolites can be …

Epulopiscium spp. are the largest known heterotrophic bacteria; a large cigar-shaped
individual is a million times the volume of Escherichia coli. To better understand the …

Horizontal acquisition of bacterial genes is presently recognized as an important
contribution to the adaptation and evolution of eukaryotic genomes. However, the …

Spontaneous reactions between metabolites are often neglected in favor of emphasizing
enzyme-catalyzed chemistry because spontaneous reaction rates are assumed to be …

The wobble bases of tRNAs that decode split codons are often heavily modified. In bacteria,
tRNAGlu, Gln, Asp contains a variety of xnm5s2U derivatives. The synthesis pathway for …