Julian Echave

The variation among sites of protein structure divergence is shaped by mutation and scaled by selection

The paper investigates how mutation and selection shape site-specific structure divergence in proteins using a mechanistic model, finding that mutation drives variation while selection scales it.

Biophysical models of protein evolution: Understanding the patterns of evolutionary sequence divergence

This paper reviews biophysical models of protein evolution, showing that slow evolution is linked to selection against toxic misfolding and misinteractions, and that slowly evolving sites often impact structure and stability rather than function.

Too packed to change: site-specific substitution rates and side-chain packing in protein evolution

The paper investigates site-specific substitution rates in protein evolution and finds that side-chain packing, not main-chain packing, primarily determines these rates.

Relationship between protein thermodynamic constraints and variation of evolutionary rates among sites

The paper develops a biophysical model linking protein thermodynamic stability to evolutionary rate variation and finds it performs comparably to an alternative stress model.