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GENE SWAPS. "The horizontal transfer of entire metabolic pathways or part thereof might have had a special role during the early stages of cellular evolution." https://lnkd.in/dxwrfTm View in LinkedIn

ONLY 20 AMINO ACIDS MAKE PROTEINS. "There are 22 standard amino acids, but only 21 are found in eukaryotes. Of the 22, 20 are directly encoded by the universal genetic code. Humans can synthesize 11 of these 20 from each other or from other molecules of intermediary metabolism. The other 9 must be consumed in the diet." https://lnkd.in/eeMC3wc View in LinkedIn

PATCHWORK HYPOTHESIS. "Concerning the mechanisms of pathway assembly, both the analysis of completely sequenced genomes and directed evolution experiments strongly support the patchwork hypothesis, according to which metabolic pathways have been assembled through the recruitment of primitive enzymes that could react with a wide range of chemically related substrates." Bolt-on exaptations. https://lnkd.in/dNeshTu View in LinkedIn

ONLY FOUR NUCLEOTIDES BUILD DNA. "There are basically four nucleotide bases, which make up the DNA. Adenine (A), Guanine (G), Thymine (T) and Cytosine(C)." (You knew that, but I am building my case)." https://lnkd.in/e7TPGqw View in LinkedIn

PROTEIN FUNCTIONAL DIVERSITY. "Moonlighting has since been demonstrated for a variety of glycolytic, TCA cycle, and other metabolic enzymes. It is now clear that moonlighting represents an important source of protein diversity in multicellular eukaryotes and is relevant for certain human diseases." https://lnkd.in/d59Qmdd View in LinkedIn

UNDIRECTED EVOLUTION. "Amoeba draws its inspiration from the 'Tierra' simulator developed by artificial life researcher Thomas Ray, but with one crucial difference: in Tierra, life-forms must be manually introduced into the soup; in Amoeba, the soup is seeded with random instructions, and life-forms spontaneously appear, as if by magic." https://lnkd.in/dJPTA3e View in LinkedIn

MOONLIGHTING FUNCTIONS. "Certain members of the ATP-grasp and cupin superfamilies lack (known) enzymatic activities and act solely as ATP-binding (synapsin), auxin-binding, or seed storage proteins. Many enzymes acquire such additional (typically non-enzymatic) functions even without the loss of their catalytic activity. This phenomenon, referred to as “moonlighting", is usually observed when the respective genes are expressed in atypical environments (tissue, cell organelle, or secreted)." https://lnkd.in/d59Qmdd View in LinkedIn

AMOEBA. "Although developing software by self-replication, evolution and natural selection sounds like science fiction, Amoeba has already demonstrated the remarkable fact that in the digital world, order can indeed arise out of chaos. Ironic, perhaps, when our experience with today's software is often quite the reverse." https://lnkd.in/dJPTA3e View in LinkedIn

METABOLIC PLASTICITY. "It has been shown that many key biochemical steps can be catalyzed by two or more diverse, often unrelated enzyme forms, a phenomenon known as non-orthologous gene displacement." https://lnkd.in/d59Qmdd View in LinkedIn

UNRELATED PLAYERS. "Comparative genomics revealed a surprising flexibility of the key metabolic pathways, including numerous biochemical reactions catalyzed by highly diverged or previously uncharacterized enzyme forms." https://lnkd.in/d59Qmdd View in LinkedIn