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Emergence of a “Cyclosome” in a Primitive Network Capable of Building “Infinite” Proteins †

We argue for the existence of an RNA sequence, called the AL (for ALpha) sequence, which may have played a role at the origin of life; this role entailed the AL sequence helping generate the first peptide assemblies via a primitive network. These peptide assemblies included “infinite” proteins. The...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Demongeot, Jacques, Norris, Vic
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6617141/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31216720
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/life9020051
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author Demongeot, Jacques
Norris, Vic
author_facet Demongeot, Jacques
Norris, Vic
author_sort Demongeot, Jacques
collection PubMed
description We argue for the existence of an RNA sequence, called the AL (for ALpha) sequence, which may have played a role at the origin of life; this role entailed the AL sequence helping generate the first peptide assemblies via a primitive network. These peptide assemblies included “infinite” proteins. The AL sequence was constructed on an economy principle as the smallest RNA ring having one representative of each codon’s synonymy class and capable of adopting a non-functional but nevertheless evolutionarily stable hairpin form that resisted denaturation due to environmental changes in pH, hydration, temperature, etc. Long subsequences from the AL ring resemble sequences from tRNAs and 5S rRNAs of numerous species like the proteobacterium, Rhodobacter sphaeroides. Pentameric subsequences from the AL are present more frequently than expected in current genomes, in particular, in genes encoding some of the proteins associated with ribosomes like tRNA synthetases. Such relics may help explain the existence of universal sequences like exon/intron frontier regions, Shine-Dalgarno sequence (present in bacterial and archaeal mRNAs), CRISPR and mitochondrial loop sequences.
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spelling pubmed-66171412019-07-18 Emergence of a “Cyclosome” in a Primitive Network Capable of Building “Infinite” Proteins † Demongeot, Jacques Norris, Vic Life (Basel) Article We argue for the existence of an RNA sequence, called the AL (for ALpha) sequence, which may have played a role at the origin of life; this role entailed the AL sequence helping generate the first peptide assemblies via a primitive network. These peptide assemblies included “infinite” proteins. The AL sequence was constructed on an economy principle as the smallest RNA ring having one representative of each codon’s synonymy class and capable of adopting a non-functional but nevertheless evolutionarily stable hairpin form that resisted denaturation due to environmental changes in pH, hydration, temperature, etc. Long subsequences from the AL ring resemble sequences from tRNAs and 5S rRNAs of numerous species like the proteobacterium, Rhodobacter sphaeroides. Pentameric subsequences from the AL are present more frequently than expected in current genomes, in particular, in genes encoding some of the proteins associated with ribosomes like tRNA synthetases. Such relics may help explain the existence of universal sequences like exon/intron frontier regions, Shine-Dalgarno sequence (present in bacterial and archaeal mRNAs), CRISPR and mitochondrial loop sequences. MDPI 2019-06-18 /pmc/articles/PMC6617141/ /pubmed/31216720 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/life9020051 Text en © 2019 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
Demongeot, Jacques
Norris, Vic
Emergence of a “Cyclosome” in a Primitive Network Capable of Building “Infinite” Proteins †
title Emergence of a “Cyclosome” in a Primitive Network Capable of Building “Infinite” Proteins †
title_full Emergence of a “Cyclosome” in a Primitive Network Capable of Building “Infinite” Proteins †
title_fullStr Emergence of a “Cyclosome” in a Primitive Network Capable of Building “Infinite” Proteins †
title_full_unstemmed Emergence of a “Cyclosome” in a Primitive Network Capable of Building “Infinite” Proteins †
title_short Emergence of a “Cyclosome” in a Primitive Network Capable of Building “Infinite” Proteins †
title_sort emergence of a “cyclosome” in a primitive network capable of building “infinite” proteins †
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6617141/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31216720
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/life9020051
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