The Long Walk / Molecules
Interactive · Molecules

The Molecules That Made Us

Evolution doesn't only live in fossils and skulls — it's written into the proteins our cells build. Spin, zoom and restyle the real 3D structures behind some of the most human stories in our genome, starting with FOXP2, the so-called "language gene".

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Structures: RCSB Protein Data Bank & AlphaFold DB

Why these molecules?

Each protein below carries a chapter of the human story — a change of diet, a move to thin mountain air, a borrowed gene from an archaic cousin, or the deep machinery of speech. Pick one to load it in the viewer above.

How to read a protein structure

Proteins are long chains of amino acids that fold into precise 3D shapes — and the shape is the function. The default cartoon view simplifies the chain into ribbons: coiled helices and flat sheets show the protein's architecture, while the "rainbow" colouring runs from the start of the chain (blue) to the end (red), so you can trace its path.

Switch to sticks or spacefill to see individual atoms, or surface to see the molecule's outer shape — the contours that let it grip DNA, oxygen or a sugar. Crystal structures (four-character PDB codes like 2A07) are experimentally measured. AlphaFold models are computational predictions; with "Confidence" colouring, warmer regions are lower-confidence — often floppy, disordered stretches that don't hold one fixed shape.

These proteins belong to specific players in our family tree — the Denisovans behind the altitude gene, the Neanderthals who shared our FOXP2. Meet them on the interactive timeline.

Explore the family tree →
Sources & further reading
  1. Enard, W. et al. (2002). "Molecular evolution of FOXP2, a gene involved in speech and language." Nature 418. nature.com
  2. Stroud, J. C. et al. (2006). "Structure of the forkhead domain of FOXP2 bound to DNA." Structure 14 (PDB 2A07). rcsb.org/2A07
  3. Krause, J. et al. (2007). "The derived FOXP2 variant of modern humans was shared with Neandertals." Current Biology 17. cell.com
  4. Perry, G. H. et al. (2007). "Diet and the evolution of human amylase gene copy number variation." Nature Genetics 39. nature.com
  5. Huerta-Sánchez, E. et al. (2014). "Altitude adaptation in Tibetans caused by introgression of Denisovan-like DNA." Nature 512 (EPAS1). nature.com
  6. Jumper, J. et al. (2021). "Highly accurate protein structure prediction with AlphaFold." Nature 596. nature.com
  7. RCSB Protein Data Bank. rcsb.org · AlphaFold Protein Structure Database. alphafold.ebi.ac.uk
  8. 3Dmol.js — Rego & Koes (2015), Bioinformatics 31. 3dmol.org