Possible Emergence of Sequence Specific RNA Aminoacylation via Peptide Intermediary to Initiate Darwinian Evolution and Code through Origin of Life
1
Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Department of Molecular & Cellular Biology, Buffalo, NY 14263, USA
2
Roumen Tsanev Institute of Molecular Biology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Acad. G. Bonchev Str. 21, Sofia 1113, Bulgaria
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Life 2018, 8(4), 44; https://doi.org/10.3390/life8040044
Received: 8 August 2018
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Revised: 30 September 2018
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Accepted: 30 September 2018
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Published: 2 October 2018
(This article belongs to the Section Hypotheses in the Life Sciences)
One of the most intriguing questions in biological science is how life originated on Earth. A large number of hypotheses have been proposed to explain it, each putting an emphasis on different events leading to functional translation and self-sustained system. Here, we propose a set of interactions that could have taken place in the prebiotic environment. According to our hypothesis, hybridization-induced proximity of short aminoacylated RNAs led to the synthesis of peptides of random sequence. We postulate that among these emerged a type of peptide(s) capable of stimulating the interaction between specific RNAs and specific amino acids, which we call “bridge peptide” (BP). We conclude that translation should have emerged at the same time when the standard genetic code begun to evolve due to the stabilizing effect on RNA-peptide complexes with the help of BPs. Ribosomes, ribozymes, and the enzyme-directed RNA replication could co-evolve within the same period, as logical outcome of RNA-peptide world without the need of RNA only self-sustained step.
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Keywords:
origin of life; hybridization-dependent peptide; origin of genetic code; translation; ribozymes; RNA world; RNA-peptide world
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MDPI and ACS Style
Kunnev, D.; Gospodinov, A. Possible Emergence of Sequence Specific RNA Aminoacylation via Peptide Intermediary to Initiate Darwinian Evolution and Code through Origin of Life. Life 2018, 8, 44. https://doi.org/10.3390/life8040044
AMA Style
Kunnev D, Gospodinov A. Possible Emergence of Sequence Specific RNA Aminoacylation via Peptide Intermediary to Initiate Darwinian Evolution and Code through Origin of Life. Life. 2018; 8(4):44. https://doi.org/10.3390/life8040044
Chicago/Turabian StyleKunnev, Dimiter, and Anastas Gospodinov. 2018. "Possible Emergence of Sequence Specific RNA Aminoacylation via Peptide Intermediary to Initiate Darwinian Evolution and Code through Origin of Life" Life 8, no. 4: 44. https://doi.org/10.3390/life8040044
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