Rebuild Ancient Protein To Reveal Ancient Eart Temperature

Researchers reconstruct proteins from ancient bacteria to measure the Earth's temperature over the ages. The scientists determined that the Earth endured a massive cooling period between 500 million and 3.5 billion years ago.

“By studying proteins encoded by these primordial genes, we are able to infer information about the environmental conditions of the early Earth,” said Eric Gaucher, Ph.D., president of scientific research at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Gainesville and the study’s lead scientist. “Genes evolve to adapt to the environmental conditions in which an organism lives. Resurrecting these since long-extinct genes gives us the opportunity to analyze and dissect the ancient surroundings that have been recorded in the gene sequence. The genes essentially behave as dynamic fossils.”

Scientists rebuild ancient proteins to reveal primordial Earth's temperature