Fedor Kondrashov and Inna Povolotskaya, members of the Center for Genome Regulation in Barcelona, ??are sure: the evolution of protein molecules continues, 3.5 billion years after its beginning. True, it is very slow, but even the very ancient proteins of different species, inherited from a common ancestor, continue to acquire differences, notes "Informnauka".

In science there is the concept of "conservative proteins". These proteins, belonging to different kinds of living beings, but performing the same functions, have similar amino acid sequences. Even in evolutionarily distant species this similarity can reach 40%. Many believe that otherwise the proteins will not be able to perform their functions. But domestic experts believe: the differences between molecules could be greater. They simply did not have time to make these differences.

As a basis, Fedor Kondrashov and Inna Povolotskaya took the experience of the American astronomer Edwin Hubble, who established that galaxies fly at a speed proportional to the distance between them. Such a setup allowed them to compare known sequences of 572 different proteins belonging to 836 types of microorganisms, including a very ancient one. Thus scientists have estimated different sequences of different proteins, i.e. the distance between them and the speed with which proteins acquire change.

Many years ago, Hubble's calculations showed that the universe arose as a result of the Big Bang, and from the point of explosion of the galaxy are still flying. Similarly, research conducted in Barcelona suggests that there was a common ancestor of all living things. Ancestral proteins that inherited from it inherited ancestral proteins, which, of course, changed in the course of evolution, acquiring more and more differences, but even after 3.5 billion years many of them did not lose their similarities.

What is important, the process of evolution is not complete, these proteins are still able and will change, acquiring more and more differences from each other and from a common ancestor. This regularity Kondrashov and Povolotskaya was called the "Great Explosion in the Protein Universe". The point of explosion in this universe is a common ancestor, and the change in its proteins in the offspring species is the dispersal of galaxies.

The slow rate of change is attributed by scientists to the very structure of proteins. The protein molecule is a sequence of amino acids folded in a certain way.

The change in protein is the substitution of one amino acid for another. Such substitutions occur from time to time, but in 98% of cases they lead to the fact that the protein molecule can not properly form and perform its functions. It is clear, this change in evolution culls. There are also changes in which the protein molecule acquires not a difference, but a resemblance to the ancestor protein, that is, taking a step backward.

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