New method to investigate origin of life

Scientists have developed what they claim is a new computational method which will help them to investigate the origin of life on Earth.

According to them, the method has the potential to trace the evolutionary histories of proteins all the way back to either cells or viruses, thus settling the debate once and for all over which of these life forms came first.

"We have just begun to tap the potential power of this method. We believe, if it's possible at all, that it is within our grasp to determine whether viruses evolved from cells or vice-versa," lead scientist Randen Patterson said.

In fact, in their study, Patterson and his colleagues at Penn State University are focusing on an ancient group of proteins, called retroelements, which comprise approximately 50 per cent of the human genome by weight and are a crucial component in a number of diseases, including AIDS.

"Retroelements are an ancient and highly diverse class of proteins; therefore, they provide a rigorous benchmark for us to test our approach. We are happy with results we derived, even though our method is in an early stage," said Patterson.

Subsequently, the scientists plan to map out the evolutionary histories of organisms by comparing their genetic or protein sequences. Those organisms that are closely related and share a recent common ancestor have greater degrees of similarity among their sequences.