A press release from Florida State University reveals that researcher Wei Yang discovered some new evolutionary clues. His work showed that certain enzymes were going about their work in a relatively efficient way, and also in a separate, not-so-efficient way.
Why would an enzyme have two pathways dedicated to the same task? Yang and his colleagues believe that the slower pathway is an evolutionary vestige left over from an ancient enzyme that evolved over eons into modern-day IMPDH.
The finding is significant for several reasons, Yang said.
“First of all, this offers a rare glimpse of evolutionary processes at work on the molecular level,” Yang said. “Typically when we talk about evolution, we’re referring to a process of adaptation that occurs in a population of organisms over an extended period of time. Our research examines such adaptations at the most basic level, which helps scientists to develop a fuller picture of how evolution actually occurs.”
