The Chemical Likelihood of Ribonucleotide-α-Amino acid Copolymers as Players for Early Stages of Evolution.

Journal of Molecular Evolution
Ziwei LiuRobert Pascal

Abstract

How ribosomal translation could have evolved remains an open question in most available scenarios for the early developments of life. Rather than considering RNA and peptides as two independent systems, this work is aimed at assessing the possibility of formation and stability of co-polymers or co-oligomers of α-amino acids and nucleotides from which translation might have evolved. Here we show that the linkages required to build such mixed structures have lifetimes of several weeks to months at neutral pH and 20 °C owing to the mutual protecting effect of both neighboring phosphoramidate and ester functional groups increasing their stability by factors of about 1 and 3 orders of magnitude, respectively. This protecting effect is reversible upon hydrolysis allowing the possibility of subsequent reactions. These copolymer models, for which an abiotic synthesis pathway is supported by experiments, form a basis from which both polymerization and translation could have logically evolved. Low temperatures were identified as a critical parameter for the kinetic stability of the aminoacylated nucleotide facilitating the synthesis of the model. This observation independently supports the views that any process involving RNA aminoacyl e...Continue Reading

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Citations

Jun 21, 2020·Nature Communications·Moran Frenkel-PinterLuke J Leman
Jun 30, 2019·Journal of Molecular Evolution·Koji Tamura
Mar 6, 2019·Life·Ziwei LiuRobert Pascal
Feb 2, 2021·Biochemistry·Aleksandar RadakovicJack W Szostak
Feb 27, 2020·Chemical Reviews·Moran Frenkel-PinterLuke J Leman
Mar 2, 2020·Chemical Science·Biswarup Jash, Clemens Richert
Jul 28, 2021·Nature Chemistry·Biswarup JashClemens Richert

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Methods Mentioned

BETA
aminoacylation
NMR
aminoacylating

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