We are pleased to invite you to the joint colloquium of the Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb (PMF-KO) and the Croatian Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (HDBMB):
The colloquium will take place on 28 November 2025 at 12:15 in lecture hall P1, PMF-KO, Horvatovac 102, Zagreb.
Speaker: Assoc. Prof. Liam M. Longo, Earth-Life Science Institute, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan
Title of the lecture: Pre-LUCA Protein Evolution: Lessons from Metabolism and Machine Learning
Abstract: “How can we reconstruct the earliest stages of protein evolution? In this talk, I will discuss two perspectives that can reveal pre-LUCA protein evolution – the web of enzyme requirements in metabolism and the centrality of a protein in sequence-structure space. On the basis of these data, I will argue that the history of protein emergence is knowable, even billions of years after the fact. Finally, I will use these perspectives to underscore one of the greatest mysteries in biology: The existence of two classes of aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases.”
