Multidimensional Phylogenetic Metrics Identify Class I Aminoacyl-tRNA Synthetase Evolutionary Mosaicity and Inter-Modular Coupling

The role of aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases (aaRS) in the emergence and evolution of genetic coding poses challenging questions concerning their provenance. We seek evidence about their ancestry from curated structure-based multiple sequence alignments of a structurally invariant “scaffold” shared by all 10 canonical Class I aaRS. Three uncorrelated phylogenetic metrics—mutation frequency, its uniformity, and row-by-row cladistic congruence—imply that the Class I scaffold is a mosaic assembled from successive genetic sources. Metrics for different modules vary in accordance with their presumed functionality. Sequences derived from the ATP– and amino acid– binding sites exhibit specific two-way coupling to those derived from Connecting Peptide 1, a third module whose metrics suggest later acquisition. The data help validate: (i) experimental fragmentations of the canonical Class I structure into three partitions that retain catalytic activities in proportion to their length; and (ii) evidence that the ancestral Class I aaRS gene also encoded a Class II ancestor in frame on the opposite strand. A 46-residue Class I “protozyme” roots the Class I tree prior to the adaptive radiation of the Rossmann dinucleotide binding fold that refined substrate discrimination. Such rooting implies near simultaneous emergence of genetic coding and the origin of the proteome, resolving a conundrum posed by previous inferences that Class I aaRS evolved after the genetic code had been implemented in an RNA world. Further, pinpointing discontinuous enhancements of aaRS fidelity establishes a timeline for the growth of coding from a binary amino acid alphabet.