Evolution as a Guide to Designing xeno Amino Acid Alphabets
1
Department of Biological Sciences, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD 21250, USA
2
Individualized Study Program, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD 21250, USA
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editor: Peter Lackner
Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2021, 22(6), 2787; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms22062787
Received: 12 February 2021
/
Revised: 1 March 2021
/
Accepted: 5 March 2021
/
Published: 10 March 2021
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Take and Give: Protein Structure Analysis and Prediction with Statistical Scoring Functions)
Here, we summarize a line of remarkably simple, theoretical research to better understand the chemical logic by which life’s standard alphabet of 20 genetically encoded amino acids evolved. The connection to the theme of this Special Issue, “Protein Structure Analysis and Prediction with Statistical Scoring Functions”, emerges from the ways in which current bioinformatics currently lacks empirical science when it comes to xenoproteins composed largely or entirely of amino acids from beyond the standard genetic code. Our intent is to present new perspectives on existing data from two different frontiers in order to suggest fresh ways in which their findings complement one another. These frontiers are origins/astrobiology research into the emergence of the standard amino acid alphabet, and empirical xenoprotein synthesis.
View Full-Text
Keywords:
amino acid; ncAA; protein structure prediction; optimality; chemistry space
▼
Show Figures
Figure 1
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
- Supplementary File 1:
ZIP-Document (ZIP, 69 KiB)
MDPI and ACS Style
Mayer-Bacon, C.; Agboha, N.; Muscalli, M.; Freeland, S. Evolution as a Guide to Designing xeno Amino Acid Alphabets. Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2021, 22, 2787. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms22062787
AMA Style
Mayer-Bacon C, Agboha N, Muscalli M, Freeland S. Evolution as a Guide to Designing xeno Amino Acid Alphabets. International Journal of Molecular Sciences. 2021; 22(6):2787. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms22062787
Chicago/Turabian StyleMayer-Bacon, Christopher, Neyiasuo Agboha, Mickey Muscalli, and Stephen Freeland. 2021. "Evolution as a Guide to Designing xeno Amino Acid Alphabets" International Journal of Molecular Sciences 22, no. 6: 2787. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms22062787
Find Other Styles
Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.
