The Role of Templating in the Emergence of RNA from the Prebiotic Chemical Mixture

Life
Andrew S TupperPaul G Higgs

Abstract

Biological RNA is a uniform polymer in three senses: it uses nucleotides of a single chirality; it uses only ribose sugars and four nucleobases rather than a mixture of other sugars and bases; and it uses only 3'-5' bonds rather than a mixture of different bond types. We suppose that prebiotic chemistry would generate a diverse mixture of potential monomers, and that random polymerization would generate non-uniform strands of mixed chirality, monomer composition, and bond type. We ask what factors lead to the emergence of RNA from this mixture. We show that template-directed replication can lead to the emergence of all the uniform properties of RNA by the same mechanism. We study a computational model in which nucleotides react via polymerization, hydrolysis, and template-directed ligation. Uniform strands act as templates for ligation of shorter oligomers of the same type, whereas mixed strands do not act as templates. The three uniform properties emerge naturally when the ligation rate is high. If there is an exact symmetry, as with the chase of chirality, the uniform property arises via a symmetry-breaking phase transition. If there is no exact symmetry, as with monomer selection and backbone regioselectivity, the uniform pr...Continue Reading

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Citations

Sep 11, 2019·Molecular Biology and Evolution·Andrew S TupperPaul G Higgs
Jul 1, 2017·Journal of Molecular Evolution·Paul G Higgs
Sep 19, 2019·Nature Chemistry·Subhendu Bhowmik, Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy
Jan 9, 2020·PLoS Computational Biology·Yong Chen, Wentao Ma
Oct 8, 2018·The Journal of Chemical Physics·Alexei V Tkachenko, Sergei Maslov
Jan 10, 2020·Chemical Reviews·Mahipal YadavRamanarayanan Krishnamurthy

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