Thermococcales, archaea from hydrothermal vents, promote iron sulfide precipitation, enabling survival in iron-rich environments. Some cells become encrusted in pyrite and do not survive mineralizati...

Protein structure is conserved beyond sequence, making multiple structural alignment (MSTA) essential for analyzing distantly related proteins. Computational prediction methods have vastly extended our repository of available protein structures, ...

De novo gene evolution entails the birth of new genes from previously non-coding DNA. In this Review, Bornberg-Bauer and Eicholt overview how protein-coding de novo genes are identified, the mechanistic and evolutionary processes underlying their emergence and evolution, and the patterns in their encoded protein structures.

Thermococcales, archaea from hydrothermal vents, promote iron sulfide precipitation, enabling survival in iron-rich environments. Some cells become encrusted in pyrite and do not survive mineralizati...

Diverse genomes of lytic phages are found in bacterial assemblies, challenging assumptions about the nature of the lytic lifestyle.

Abstract. Ribosomes are essential for protein synthesis and require ribosome biogenesis factors for assembly. To uncover the evolutionary diversity of ribo

Nucleocytoplasmic large DNA viruses (NCLDVs) encode multi-subunit RNA polymerases (msRNAPs) that challenge conventional views of viral evolution. Phylogenetic and structural studies reveal that NCLDV RNAP catalytic cores share deep evolutionary roots with eukaryotic counterparts, implicating ancient gene transfers that shaped the last eukaryotic common ancestor (LECA), underscoring NCLDVs’ pivotal role in eukaryotic origins. NCLDV RNAP retains the fundamental architecture of cellular RNAPs while evolving and adapting for viral gene regulation. This review summarizes structural and functional divergences between viral and cellular RNAPs, synthesizes evidence for virus-driven RNAP evolution, and evaluates emerging hypotheses of viral eukaryogenesis. Viewing viruses as evolutionary collaborators offers new insights into RNAP adaptability and bridges virology, evolutionary biology, and synthetic biology across diverse biological contexts.

Archaeal transcription is a hybrid of eukaryotic and prokaryotic features: an RNA polymerase II (RNAPII)-like polymerase transcribes genes organized i…

In collaboration with New England Biolabs, the DNA Replication research group led by Ludovic Sauguet at the Institut Pasteur has published in Nucleic Acids Research an innovative approach based on Pac...

Borgs are large extrachromosomal elements of anaerobic methane-oxidizing archaea. Here, via in silico protein structure prediction of ~10,000 Borg proteins, the authors reveal that Borgs share numerous features with giant eukaryotic viruses, suggesting that Borgs have a viral-like lifestyle and evolutionary convergence of large extrachromosomal elements across the Domains of Life.