canonical amino acids Archives

Relationships between amino acid composition, physicochemical properties, and proteome elemental composition across cellular and viral life. (A) Heatmap showing Spearman rank correlations (ρ) between amino acid frequencies and normalized elemental composition for carbon (C), hydrogen (H), nitrogen (N), oxygen (O), sulfur (S), and selenium (Se) across cellular domains and viral realms. Amino acids are shown on the yaxis using standard three and one-letter abbreviations. (B) Heatmap showing Spearman correlations between aggregated amino acid physicochemical property classes and elemental composition across the same groups. Properties include aliphatic, aromatic, non-polar, polar, charged, basic, and acidic residues. Colors indicate correlation strength and direction from negative (yellow) to positive (blue), with gray cells indicating absent values. -- q-bio.PE

Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics, Origin & Evolution of Life, Status Report

Deep-time Consistency In Proteome Elemental Composition Across Cellular And Viral Life

by Keith CowingMay 27, 2026May 27, 2026

Proteins are constructed from a limited alphabet of ~20 amino acids, yet the origins and selection of this specific alphabet are unresolved.

Utilization of reduced amino acid alphabets by modern proteins. (A) Workflow for finding of modern proteins composed of any reduced amino acid alphabet (left) or a reduced alphabet from early amino acids (right). (B) Analysis of the resulting 2,794 proteins. Each protein is represented as a dot colored by the number of amino acids from which it is formed. Lines pointing from the origin correspond to repetitive structures. (C) Selected interesting proteins L1I491 (uncharacterized protein from Guillardia theta) and S2Z2L9 thrombospondin type 3 repeat-containing protein from Corynebacterium pyruviciproducens. -- biorxiv.org

Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics, Microbiology & Virology, Press Release

Minimal Amino Acid Alphabet for Protein Design

by Keith CowingMarch 28, 2026March 28, 2026

Proteins are built from 20 canonical amino acids. It is interesting to explore whether proteins can be formed from significantly reduced amino acid alphabets.

canonical amino acids

Deep-time Consistency In Proteome Elemental Composition Across Cellular And Viral Life

Minimal Amino Acid Alphabet for Protein Design

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