Re: News: Origin of Life: Generating RNA Molecules in Water

On Nov 29, 3:46 pm, macaddic...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (macaddicted)
wrote:
<http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091120124829.htm>

ScienceDaily (Nov. 25, 2009) — A key question in the origin of
biological molecules like RNA and DNA is how they first came together
billions of years ago from simple precursors. Researchers in Italy have
reconstructed one of the earliest evolutionary steps yet: generating
long chains of RNA from individual subunits using nothing but warm
water.

Many researchers believe that RNA was one of the first biological
molecules present, before DNA and proteins; however, there has been
little success in recreating the formation on RNA from simple
"prebiotic" molecules that likely were present on primordial earth
billions of years ago.

Now, Ernesto Di Mauro and colleagues found that ancient molecules called
cyclic nucleotides can merge together in water and form polymers over
100 nucleotides long in water ranging from 40-90 °C -- similar to water
temperatures on ancient Earth.

Cyclic nucleotides like cyclic-AMP are very similar to the nucleotides
that make up individual pieces of DNA or RNA (A, T, G and C), except
that they form an extra chemical bond and assume a ring-shaped
structure. That extra bond makes cyclic nucleotides more reactive,
though, and thus they were able to join together into long chains at a
decent rate (about 200 hours to reach 100 nucleotides long).

This finding is exciting as cyclic nucleotides themselves can be easily
formed from simple chemicals like formamide, thus making them plausible
prebiotic compounds present during primordial times. Thus, this study
may be revealing how the first bits of genetic information were created.

Story Source:
Adapted from materials provided by American Society for Biochemistry and
Molecular Biology, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Journal Reference:
        1.      Giovanna Costanzo, Samanta Pino, Fabiana Ciciriello and
Ernesto Di Mauro. Generation of long RNA chains in water. Journal of
Biological Chemistry, 2009; DOI: 10.1074/jbc.M109.041905


Cool article. Bookmarked. Thanks!


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