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The origin of biological homochirality along with the origin of life

How homochirality concerning biopolymers (DNA/RNA/proteins) could have originally occurred (i.e., arisen from a non-life chemical world, which tended to be chirality-symmetric) is a long-standing scientific puzzle. For many years, people have focused on exploring plausible physic-chemical mechanisms...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Chen, Yong, Ma, Wentao
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6974302/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31914131
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007592
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author Chen, Yong
Ma, Wentao
author_facet Chen, Yong
Ma, Wentao
author_sort Chen, Yong
collection PubMed
description How homochirality concerning biopolymers (DNA/RNA/proteins) could have originally occurred (i.e., arisen from a non-life chemical world, which tended to be chirality-symmetric) is a long-standing scientific puzzle. For many years, people have focused on exploring plausible physic-chemical mechanisms that may have led to prebiotic environments biased to one chiral type of monomers (e.g., D-nucleotides against L-nucleotides; L-amino-acids against D-amino-acids)–which should have then assembled into corresponding polymers with homochirality, but as yet have achieved no convincing advance. Here we show, by computer simulation–with a model based on the RNA world scenario, that the biased-chirality may have been established at polymer level instead, just deriving from a racemic mixture of monomers (i.e., equally with the two chiral types). In other words, the results suggest that the homochirality may have originated along with the advent of biopolymers during the origin of life, rather than somehow at the level of monomers before the origin of life.
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spelling pubmed-69743022020-02-04 The origin of biological homochirality along with the origin of life Chen, Yong Ma, Wentao PLoS Comput Biol Research Article How homochirality concerning biopolymers (DNA/RNA/proteins) could have originally occurred (i.e., arisen from a non-life chemical world, which tended to be chirality-symmetric) is a long-standing scientific puzzle. For many years, people have focused on exploring plausible physic-chemical mechanisms that may have led to prebiotic environments biased to one chiral type of monomers (e.g., D-nucleotides against L-nucleotides; L-amino-acids against D-amino-acids)–which should have then assembled into corresponding polymers with homochirality, but as yet have achieved no convincing advance. Here we show, by computer simulation–with a model based on the RNA world scenario, that the biased-chirality may have been established at polymer level instead, just deriving from a racemic mixture of monomers (i.e., equally with the two chiral types). In other words, the results suggest that the homochirality may have originated along with the advent of biopolymers during the origin of life, rather than somehow at the level of monomers before the origin of life. Public Library of Science 2020-01-08 /pmc/articles/PMC6974302/ /pubmed/31914131 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007592 Text en © 2020 Chen, Ma http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Chen, Yong
Ma, Wentao
The origin of biological homochirality along with the origin of life
title The origin of biological homochirality along with the origin of life
title_full The origin of biological homochirality along with the origin of life
title_fullStr The origin of biological homochirality along with the origin of life
title_full_unstemmed The origin of biological homochirality along with the origin of life
title_short The origin of biological homochirality along with the origin of life
title_sort origin of biological homochirality along with the origin of life
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6974302/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31914131
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007592
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