Reference Terms
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Structural alignment (genomics)
Structural alignment is a form of sequence alignment based on comparison of shape. These alignments attempt to establish equivalences between two or more polymer structures based on their shape and three-dimensional conformation. This process is usually applied to protein tertiary structures but can also be used for large RNA molecules. In contrast to simple structural superposition, where at least some equivalent residues of the two structures are known, structural alignment requires no a priori knowledge of equivalent positions. Structural alignment is a valuable tool for the comparison of proteins with low sequence similarity, where evolutionary relationships between proteins cannot be easily detected by standard sequence alignment techniques. Structural alignment can therefore be used to imply evolutionary relationships between proteins that share very little common sequence.
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Fossils & Ruins News
July 29, 2025
July 11, 2025 — Scientists have uncovered DNA from 214 ancient pathogens in prehistoric humans, including the oldest known evidence of plague. The findings show zoonotic diseases began spreading around 6,500 years ...
July 3, 2025 — When Siberian volcanoes kicked off the Great Dying, the real climate villain turned out to be the rainforests themselves: once they collapsed, Earth’s biggest carbon sponge vanished, CO₂ ...
June 3, 2025 — Collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet could be triggered with very little ocean warming above present-day, leading to a devastating four meters of global sea level rise to play out over hundreds ...
June 3, 2025 — A new study has finally confirmed the theory that the cause of extraordinary global tremors in September -- October 2023 was indeed two mega tsunamis in Greenland that became trapped standing waves. Using a brand-new type of satellite altimetry, the ...
June 2, 2025 — New research adds to our understanding of how rapidly rising sea levels due to climate change foreshadow the end of the Great Barrier Reef as we know it. The findings suggest the reef can withstand rising sea levels in isolation but is vulnerable to ...
June 2, 2025 — Researchers have recreated the world's oldest synthetic pigment, called Egyptian blue, which was used in ancient Egypt about 5,000 years ...
May 30, 2025 — A new species of velvet worm, Peripatopsis barnardi, represents the first ever species from the arid Karoo, which indicates that the area was likely historically more forested than at present. In the Cape Fold Mountains, we now know that every ...
May 30, 2025 — A new method could soon unlock the vast repository of biological information held in the proteins of ancient soft tissues. The findings could open up a new era for palaeobiological ...
May 29, 2025 — New techniques used to analyze soft tissue in dinosaur fossils may hold the key to new cancer discoveries. Researchers have analyzed dinosaur fossils using advanced paleoproteomic techniques, a method that holds promise for uncovering molecular data ...
May 29, 2025 — The fossils of ancient salamander-like creatures in Scotland are among the most well-preserved examples of early stem tetrapods -- some of the first animals to make the transition from water to land. Thanks to new research, scientists believe that ...
May 29, 2025 — Anthropologists have examined the societal consequences of global glacier loss. This article appears alongside new research that estimates that more than three-quarters of the world's glacier mass could disappear by the end of the century under ...
May 29, 2025 — Long considered a disease brought to the Americas by European colonizers, leprosy may actually have a much older history on the American continent. Scientists reveal that a recently identified second species of bacteria responsible for leprosy, ...
Latest Headlines
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July 29, 2025 — A fish thought to be evolution’s time capsule just surprised scientists. A detailed dissection of the coelacanth — a 400-million-year-old species ...
July 24, 2025 — A tiny, overlooked wrist bone called the pisiform may have played a pivotal role in bird flight and it turns out it evolved far earlier than scientists thought. Fossils from bird-like dinosaurs in ...
July 24, 2025 — A century-old fossil long mislabeled as a caterpillar has been reidentified as the first-known nonmarine lobopodian—rewriting what we know about ancient life. Discovered in Harvard’s museum ...
July 24, 2025 — Half a billion years ago, a strange sea-dwelling creature called Mollisonia symmetrica may have paved the way for modern spiders. Using detailed fossil brain analysis, researchers uncovered neural ...
July 19, 2025 — Ancient Iranians hosted epic feasts with wild boars that had been hunted and transported from distant regions. These animals weren’t just ...
July 18, 2025 — Neanderthals living just 70 kilometers apart in Israel may have had different food prep customs, according to new research on butchered animal bones. ...
July 17, 2025 — Neanderthals living in two nearby caves in ancient Israel prepared their food in surprisingly different ways, according to new archaeological evidence. Despite using the same tools and hunting the ...
July 16, 2025 — After baffling scholars for over a century, Cambridge researchers have reinterpreted the long-lost Song of Wade, revealing it to be a chivalric ...
July 13, 2025 — For centuries, we’ve imagined Neanderthals as distant cousins — a separate species that vanished long ago. But thanks to AI-powered genetic research, scientists have revealed a far more entangled ...
July 12, 2025 — A major breakthrough in Maya archaeology has emerged from Caracol, Belize, where the University of Houston team uncovered the tomb of Te K'ab Chaak—Caracol’s first known ruler. Buried with ...