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 …

Deep neural-network-based language models (LMs) are increasingly applied to large-scale
protein sequence data to predict protein function. However, being largely black-box models …

This article is dedicated to the memory of Michael G. Rossmann. Dating back to the last
universal common ancestor, P-loop NTPases and Rossmanns comprise the most ubiquitous …

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 …

How do proteins evolve? How do changes in sequence mediate changes in protein
structure, and in turn in function? This question has multiple angles, ranging from …

Mechanisms of emergence and divergence of protein folds pose central questions in
biological sciences. Incremental mutation and stepwise adaptation explain relationships …

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 …

Although homologous protein sequences are expected to adopt similar structures, some
amino acid substitutions can interconvert α-helices and β-sheets. Such fold switching may …

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

The noncoding genome plays an important role in de novo gene birth and in the emergence
of genetic novelty. Nevertheless, how noncoding sequences' properties could promote the …