title: Bringing molecules back into molecular evolution.
abstract: Much molecular-evolution research is concerned with sequence analysis. Yet these sequences represent real, three-dimensional molecules with complex structure and function. Here I highlight a growing trend in the field to incorporate molecular structure and function into computational molecular-evolution work. I consider three focus areas: reconstruction and analysis of past evolutionary events, such as phylogenetic inference or methods to infer selection pressures; development of toy models and simulations to identify fundamental principles of molecular evolution; and atom-level, highly realistic computational modeling of molecular structure and function aimed at making predictions about possible future evolutionary events.
authors: Institute of Cell and Molecular Biology, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, United States of America. wilke@austin.utexas.edu
authors: Claus O
authors: CO
authors: Wilke
mesh_terms: D055592:Biophysical Phenomena; D019295:Computational Biology; D003198:Computer Simulation; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D008957:Models, Genetic; D008958:Models, Molecular; D011506:Proteins / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics
chemical_list: D011506:Proteins