Some domain families of similar function have expanded more than others during evolution. Different domain families might have significantly different constraints imposed by their fold that could explain these differences. This project aims to understand what properties determine these differences focusing in particular on peptide binding domains. Examples of constraints to explore include average cost of production or capacity to generate binding diversity for the domain family.
This project is also a test for using Google Code as a research project management system for open science (see here for project home). Wiki pages will be used to collect previous research and milestone discoveries during the project development and to write the final manuscript towards the end of the project. Issue tracking system can be used to organize the required project tasks and assign them to participants. The file repository can hold the datasets and code used to derive any result.
I plan to use the blog as a notebook for the project (tag: domainevolution) and the project home at Google Code as the repository and organization center. The next few post regarding the project will be dedicated to explain better why I am interested in the question and develop further what are some of my expectations. Anyone interested in contributing is more than welcome to join in along the way. I should say that I am not in any hurry and that this is something for my 20% time ;).