Recent developments in Origins of Life research have focused on substantiating the
narrative of an abiotic emergence of nucleic acids from organic molecules of low molecular …

Conspectus In the quest to understand prebiotic catalysis, different molecular entities, mainly
minerals, metal ions, organic cofactors, and ribozymes, have been implied as key players. Of …

Cryptic pockets, or pockets absent in ligand-free, experimentally determined structures, hold
great potential as drug targets. However, cryptic pocket openings are often beyond the reach …

The design of compounds that can discriminate between closely related target proteins
remains a central challenge in drug discovery. Specific therapeutics targeting the highly …

Controlled degradation of proteins is necessary for ensuring their abundance and sustaining
a healthy and accurately functioning proteome. One of the degradation routes involves the …

Biological redox reactions drive planetary biogeochemical cycles. Using a novel, structure-
guided sequence analysis of proteins, we explored the patterns of evolution of enzymes …

Motivation The detection of homology through sequence comparison is a typical first step in
the study of protein function and evolution. In this work, we explore the applicability of …

The vast majority of theoretically possible polypeptide chains do not fold, let alone confer
function. Hence, protein evolution from preexisting building blocks has clear potential …

Ring-shaped hexameric helicases are essential motor proteins that separate duplex nucleic
acid strands for DNA replication, recombination, and transcriptional regulation. Two …

Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in understanding the physicochemical
parameters that shape enzyme evolution, as well as substantial advances in computational …