An ancient family of SelB elongation factor-like proteins with a broad but disjunct distribution across archaea

Our newest paper has just been published in BMC Evolutionary Biology! Click here to read!

It describes our phylogenetic analysis of aSelBL, a strange group of proteins in archaea that are close relatives of the selenocysteine-specific GTPase elongation factor SelB. Intriguingly, they're found in archaea that don't use selenocysteine, and they have a very much disrupted GTPase domain. Their function is quite a mystery! We can only speculate from our in silico analyses, but hopefully one day some brave souls will tackle the question experimentally!