Journey to the past: molecular de-extinction enables the discovery of ancient β-defensins and highlights their evolutionary history.

Molecular de-extinction is an innovative science aiming to discover, synthesize, and characterize molecules throughout evolution. Recent work by Ferreira et al. involved mining ancient genomes to search for antimicrobial defensins. They discovered six ancient β-defensins, revealing their evolutionary history and uncovering their structural and biochemical properties, which could feed medical applications.