Revenant

Revenant provides a curated database of resurrected proteins from extinct organisms to support evolutionary and biochemical analyses.

Key Features:

• Dataset size and temporal range: 84 resurrected proteins spanning from 4200 million years ago to 6.3 million years ago.
• Annotations: Each entry is annotated with structural, biochemical, and biophysical information.
• Provenance: Entries are sourced from bibliographic data.
• Reconstruction and experimental validation: Proteins were reconstructed using ancestral sequence reconstruction techniques and complemented by wet-laboratory synthesis and expression.

Scientific Applications:

• Evolutionary hypothesis testing: Testing hypotheses about protein stability and the emergence of novel functions over evolutionary time.
• Ancient metabolism reconstruction: Gaining biochemical insights into ancient metabolic pathways.
• Specificity and promiscuity studies: Investigating the specificity and promiscuity of proteins from extinct organisms.
• Molecular evolution: Exploring the molecular underpinnings of evolution and ancient biochemical pathways.

Methodology:

Ancestral sequence reconstruction techniques were used to infer ancient protein sequences.