Our new paper on the evolutionary persistence of useless molecular complexes, out today in @Nature. 1/6 nature.com/articles/s4158…
Incredibly creative work by @KaHochberg, who found a universal principle of evo biochemistry in a detailed experimental case study. 2/6
Proteins quickly become addicted to binding other proteins, even when the interaction confers no functional benefit. Complexity is then pointless but irreversible. 3/6
The hydrophobic ratchet: thanks to the genetic code, neutral mutations quickly drive interfaces to become more hydrophobic than water-exposed surfaces can tolerate. 4/6 
Purifying selection then entrenches the complex, because reverting to the solo state would make the subunits unstable and aggregation-prone. 5/6
Pointless protein-protein interactions, which would otherwise come and go during evolution, therefore accumulate over time. Today's cells may be full of entrenched molecular complexes that never performed a useful function, or long ago ceased to do so. 6/6
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