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The Role of Templating in the Emergence of RNA from the Prebiotic Chemical Mixture
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 chemi...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2017
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5745554/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29088116 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/life7040041 |
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author | Tupper, Andrew S. Shi, Kevin Higgs, Paul G. |
author_facet | Tupper, Andrew S. Shi, Kevin Higgs, Paul G. |
author_sort | Tupper, Andrew S. |
collection | PubMed |
description | 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 property emerges gradually as the rate of template-directed ligation is increased. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5745554 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2017 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-57455542018-01-02 The Role of Templating in the Emergence of RNA from the Prebiotic Chemical Mixture Tupper, Andrew S. Shi, Kevin Higgs, Paul G. Life (Basel) Article 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 property emerges gradually as the rate of template-directed ligation is increased. MDPI 2017-10-31 /pmc/articles/PMC5745554/ /pubmed/29088116 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/life7040041 Text en © 2017 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Article Tupper, Andrew S. Shi, Kevin Higgs, Paul G. The Role of Templating in the Emergence of RNA from the Prebiotic Chemical Mixture |
title | The Role of Templating in the Emergence of RNA from the Prebiotic Chemical Mixture |
title_full | The Role of Templating in the Emergence of RNA from the Prebiotic Chemical Mixture |
title_fullStr | The Role of Templating in the Emergence of RNA from the Prebiotic Chemical Mixture |
title_full_unstemmed | The Role of Templating in the Emergence of RNA from the Prebiotic Chemical Mixture |
title_short | The Role of Templating in the Emergence of RNA from the Prebiotic Chemical Mixture |
title_sort | role of templating in the emergence of rna from the prebiotic chemical mixture |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5745554/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29088116 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/life7040041 |
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