Some perspective on what this means: it's somewhat rare (but not insanely rare) to find new DNA-binding proteins that aren't very similar to something that alr

Some perspective on what this means: it's somewhat rare (but not insanely rare) to find new DNA-binding proteins that aren't very similar to something that already exists in another organism. What this paper is saying is that the researchers found a new gene with little similarity to known DNA-binding proteins, and showed that it's both a DNA-binding protein, and that it binds specific DNA sequences. An implication is that we might not know as much as we think we do about the kinds of proteins that bind to DNA, since we're still finding new stuff. However, for all we know, this protein could work just like one of the known DNA-binding proteins, just using a different protein sequence. That would be weird, but not exceptionally weird. It's possible that this is a pretty rare find, and that we really do know most of the basic protein structures that bind DNA sequences. But at the same time...there are tons of weird microbes out there whose genes we know nothing about. The world is a big place. That said, we're still not any closer to making velociraptors.