A Cross-chiral RNA Polymerase Ribozyme

Thirty years ago it was shown that the non-enzymatic, template-directed polymerization of activated mononucleotides proceeds readily in a homochiral system, but is severely inhibited by the presence of the opposing enantiomer.(1) This finding poses a severe challenge for the spontaneous emergence of RNA-based life, and has led to the suggestion that either RNA was preceded by some other genetic polymer that is not subject to chiral inhibition(2) or chiral symmetry was broken through chemical processes prior to the origin of RNA-based life.(3,4) Once an RNA enzyme arose that could catalyze the polymerization of RNA, it would have been possible to distinguish among the two enantiomers, enabling RNA replication and RNA-based evolution to occur. It is commonly thought that the earliest RNA polymerase and its substrates would have been of the same handedness, but this is not necessarily the case. Replicating D-and L-RNA molecules may have emerged together, based on the ability of structured RNAs of one handedness to catalyze the templated polymerization of activated mononucleotides of the opposite handedness. Such a cross-chiral RNA polymerase has now been developed using in vitro evolution. The D-RNA enzyme, consisting of 83 nucleotides, catalyzes the joining of L-mono- or oligonucleotide substrates on a complementary L-RNA template, and similarly for the L-enzyme with D-substrates and a D-template. Chiral inhibition is avoided because the 10(6)-fold rate acceleration of the enzyme only pertains to cross-chiral substrates. The enzyme's activity is sufficient to generate full-length copies of its enantiomer through the templated joining of 11 component oligonucleotides.