Protein Structure and Functions: Creation of New Protein Functions

Dear Colleagues,

Diverse organisms inhabit on the present Earth using versatile proteins.  Proteins are the most important biopolymers expressing various functions in organisms. On the other hand, the amino acid sequence diversity of even a small protein, which is composed of only 100 amino acids, reaches 100²⁰ = ~10¹³⁰. This means that protein has the potential to generate an extraordinarily large number of new functions.

New proteins are generated through three processes, which are described as follows:

   (1) Creation of entirely new proteins through actually or essentially random process.

   (2) Creation of orthologous proteins upon speciation of organisms.

   (3) Creation of paralogous proteins upon gene duplication in an organism.

The gene duplication theory, which was proposed by S. Ohno, can explain well the creation processes of homologous proteins, (2) and (3), but cannot entirely account for the creation of new proteins (1). However, of the three mechanisms, the first is the most important, because, if the mechanism by which entirely new proteins have been created could be made clear, it is expected that a large number of artificial proteins with new functions could be produced by the application of the knowledge to new protein technologies. I have proposed a GC-NSF(a) hypothesis assuming that entirely new proteins should be created from a nonstop frame on an antisense strand of a GC-rich gene based on protein 0^th-order structure. I believe that entirely new proteins with any necessary functions would be effectively created according to the GC-NSF(a) hypothesis.

Therefore, it is important to apply the knowledge about the creation of entirely new proteins to new technologies for producing artificial proteins, which have recently enjoyed significant progression. Knowledge of the origin of protein and techniques producing artificial proteins would complementarily contribute to each other, as the development of one knowledge could accelerate the progress of the other techniques and vice versa. Thus, newly developed protein technologies could be applied to many industries. Both theoretical and experimental approaches for the creation of proteins with new functions are encouraged for submission.

Prof. Kenji Ikehara
Guest Editor

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• the origin of protein
• protein 0th-order structure
• creation of new protein function
• development of new protein technology
• the origin of life