7 – Evolutionary Reconstructions in the Ribonuclease Family

Publisher Summary This chapter provides an overview of the ribonuclease (RNases) family. RNases of the bovine pancreatic superfamily play a central role in the development of ideas and technologies to study protein structure and catalysis. This is because RNase is small, present in large amounts in the pancreas of ruminants, stable under a wide range of conditions, and therefore amenable to full chemical analysis. It was among the first proteins to be sequenced, the first protein to be examined by NMR spectroscopy, and the first to be unfolded and refolded in the laboratory. This chapter also discusses the use of protein engineering for understanding the evolution. It explains concepts related to experimental paleomolecular geobiology. It also describes collection of additional seminal RNase sequences from recently diverging artiodactyls. An overview of reconstructing evolution of biomolecular behavior in the RNase superfamily is also presented in this chapter. The chapter elaborates in detail about the repair of damaged pseudogenes by gene conversion. The chapter concludes with a discussion on physiological functions of seminal RNase.