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Common origins of RNA, protein and lipid precursors in a cyanosulfidic protometabolism.

ABSTRACT: A minimal cell can be thought of as comprising informational, compartment-forming and metabolic subsystems. To imagine the abiotic assembly of such an overall system, however, places great demands on hypothetical prebiotic chemistry. The perceived differences and incompatibilities between these subsystems have led to the widely held assumption that one or other subsystem must have preceded the others. Here we experimentally investigate the validity of this assumption by examining the assembly of various biomolecular building blocks from prebiotically plausible intermediates and one-carbon feedstock molecules. We show that precursors of ribonucleotides, amino acids and lipids can all be derived by the reductive homologation of hydrogen cyanide and some of its derivatives, and thus that all the cellular subsystems could have arisen simultaneously through common chemistry. The key reaction steps are driven by ultraviolet light, use hydrogen sulfide as the reductant and can be accelerated by Cu(I)-Cu(II) photoredox cycling.

SUBMITTER: Patel BH

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4568310 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Common origins of RNA, protein and lipid precursors in a cyanosulfidic protometabolism.

Patel Bhavesh H BH Percivalle Claudia C Ritson Dougal J DJ Duffy Colm D CD Sutherland John D JD

Nature chemistry 20150316 4

A minimal cell can be thought of as comprising informational, compartment-forming and metabolic subsystems. To imagine the abiotic assembly of such an overall system, however, places great demands on hypothetical prebiotic chemistry. The perceived differences and incompatibilities between these subsystems have led to the widely held assumption that one or other subsystem must have preceded the others. Here we experimentally investigate the validity of this assumption by examining the assembly of ...[more]

PMID: 25803468

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Project description:Temperate bacteriophages are common and establish lysogens of their bacterial hosts in which the prophage is stably inherited. It is typical for such prophages to be integrated into the bacterial chromosome, but extrachromosomally replicating prophages have been described also, with the best characterized being the Escherichia coli phage P1 system. Among the large collection of sequenced mycobacteriophages, more than half are temperate or predicted to be temperate, most of which code for a tyrosine or serine integrase that promotes site-specific prophage integration. However, within the large group of 621 cluster A temperate phages, ∼20% lack an integration cassette, which is replaced with a parABS partitioning system. A subset of these phages carry genes coding for a RepA-like protein (RepA phages), which we show here is necessary and sufficient for autonomous extrachromosomal replication. The non-RepA phages appear to replicate using an RNA-based system, as a parABS-proximal region expressing a noncoding RNA is required for replication. Both RepA and non-RepA phage-based plasmids replicate at one or two copies per cell, transform both Mycobacterium smegmatis and Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and are compatible with pAL5000-derived oriM and integration-proficient plasmid vectors. Characterization of these phage-based plasmids offers insights into the variability of lysogenic maintenance systems and provides a large suite of plasmids for actinobacterial genetics that vary in stability, copy number, compatibility, and host range.IMPORTANCE Bacteriophages are the most abundant biological entities in the biosphere and are a source of uncharacterized biological mechanisms and genetic tools. Here, we identify segments of phage genomes that are used for stable extrachromosomal replication in the prophage state. Autonomous replication of some of these phages requires a RepA-like protein, although most lack repA and use RNA-based systems for replication initiation. We describe a suite of plasmids based on these prophage replication functions that vary in copy number, stability, host range, and compatibility. These plasmids expand the toolbox available for genetic manipulation of Mycobacterium and other Actinobacteria, including Gordonia terrae.

Dataset Information

Common origins of RNA, protein and lipid precursors in a cyanosulfidic protometabolism.

Publications

Common origins of RNA, protein and lipid precursors in a cyanosulfidic protometabolism.

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