Data and code: Amino acid composition of ancient RNA-binding proteins supports the RNA World hypothesis

This repository contains all data and scripts used to analyze the amino acid composition of RNA-binding proteins across the three domains of life (Bacteria, Archaea, Eukarya), in the context of the evolutionary stages of ribosome assembly described by Petrov et al. (2014, 2015). The central hypothesis tested is that proteins that bind RNA — particularly those classified as ancient based on phylogenomic criteria (Weiss et al. 2018) — are enriched in amino acids predicted to have originated early in the history of the genetic code (the "Early" group, following the temporal ordering of Trifonov 2000/2004).