Betül Kaçar

This study identifies two paralogous guanine deaminases in C. elegans that regulate purine homeostasis, with one acquired via horizontal gene transfer from bacteria.

The paper investigates microbial N2O reduction in sulfidic waters, finding that Proterozoic oceans likely had lower N2O emissions due to active N2O reduction under euxinic conditions.

The paper identifies a tunable interface in nitrogenase that can be engineered to enhance enzyme activity and stability through targeted mutations.

The paper investigates the evolutionary and functional roles of translation initiation factor 2 (IF2) terminal extensions across bacteria, showing their role in stress response and adaptation.

The paper resurrects ancient nitrogenase enzymes and shows their nitrogen isotope signatures are similar to modern ones, suggesting evolutionary invariance and supporting the use of N-isotope biosignatures for detecting life.

The paper investigates how ecological constraints and evolutionary trade-offs influence nitrogen fixation across different habitats by analyzing microbial genomes and environmental factors.

ChemOrigins is a community-curated database that organizes experimentally supported prebiotic reactions into a knowledge graph for research and education.

This study classifies and characterizes MotAB stator complexes across bacterial phyla, identifying structural innovations linked to flagellar motility.

The paper evaluates macroscale and microscale metrics to distinguish biotic from abiotic chemical reaction networks and proposes an agnostic toolset for life detection.

This study investigates how iron availability influenced early eukaryotic evolution by linking geochemical records with microbial biochemistry, suggesting iron constraints rather than oxygen availability drove eukaryogenesis.

This study uses phylogenomic analysis to show that molybdenum-dependent enzymes existed as early as 3.4 billion years ago, suggesting Mo was bioavailable in ancient oceans.

The paper analyzes the evolutionary dynamics of RuBisCO, showing how the small subunit influenced the enzyme's conformational flexibility and response to atmospheric changes.

The paper explains the evolutionary timing of nitrogenase isozymes by linking ecological competition for molybdenum to changes in environmental conditions after the Great Oxidation Event.

The paper reconstructs the structural evolution of nitrogenase enzymes over 3 billion years using phylogenetics, ancestral sequence reconstruction, crystallography, and deep learning.

This study experimentally reconstructs an ancestral nitrogenase enzyme and shows it strictly requires ATP hydrolysis for N2 reduction, decoupling cofactor selection from environmental availability.

The paper constructs a multilayer graph of biochemical reactions for translation, polymer biosynthesis, and metabolism in E. coli, revealing distinct modular structures and multimodal distributions.