Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2009, 10(4), 1788-1807; doi:10.3390/ijms10041788
Article

Non-Enzymatic Template-Directed Recombination of RNAs

Sergey Y. Nechaev* email, Alexei V. Lutayemail, Valentin V. Vlassovemail and Marina A. Zenkovaemail
Institute of Chemical Biology and Fundamental Medicine, Siberian Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences, 8 Lavrentiev Avenue, Novosibirsk 630090, Russian Federation
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Received: 31 March 2009; in revised form: 10 April 2009 / Accepted: 15 April 2009 / Published: 21 April 2009
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Origin of Life)
PDF Full-text Download PDF Full-Text [714 KB, uploaded 21 April 2009 11:36 CEST]
Abstract: RNA non-enzymatic recombination reactions are of great interest within the hypothesis of the "RNA world", which argues that at some stage of prebiotic life development proteins were not yet engaged in biochemical reactions and RNA carried out both the information storage task and the full range of catalytic roles necessary in primitive self-replicating systems. Here we report on the study of recombination reaction occuring between two 96 nucleotides (nts) fragments of RNAs under physiological conditions and governed by a short oligodeoxyribonucleotide template, partially complementary to sequences within each of the RNAs. Analysis of recombination products shows that ligation is predominantly template-directed, and occurs within the complementary complex with the template in "butt-to-butt" manner, in 1- or 3- nts bulges or in 2-3 nts internal loops. Minor recombination products formed in the template-independent manner are detected as well.
Keywords: RNA; non-enzymatic recombination; non-enzymatic ligation; RNA bulge loops; RNA internal loops; RNA world; origin of life

Article Statistics

Click here to load and display the download statistics.

Cite This Article

MDPI and ACS Style

Nechaev, S.Y.; Lutay, A.V.; Vlassov, V.V.; Zenkova, M.A. Non-Enzymatic Template-Directed Recombination of RNAs. Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2009, 10, 1788-1807.

AMA Style

Nechaev SY, Lutay AV, Vlassov VV, Zenkova MA. Non-Enzymatic Template-Directed Recombination of RNAs. International Journal of Molecular Sciences. 2009; 10(4):1788-1807.

Chicago/Turabian Style

Nechaev, Sergey Y.; Lutay, Alexei V.; Vlassov, Valentin V.; Zenkova, Marina A. 2009. "Non-Enzymatic Template-Directed Recombination of RNAs." Int. J. Mol. Sci. 10, no. 4: 1788-1807.

Int. J. Mol. Sci. EISSN 1422-0067 Published by MDPI AG, Basel, Switzerland RSS E-Mail Table of Contents Alert