Spontaneous advent of genetic diversity in RNA populations through multiple recombination mechanisms.

ABSTRACT: There are several plausible abiotic synthetic routes from prebiotic chemical materials to ribonucleotides and even short RNA oligomers. However, for refinement of the RNA World hypothesis to help explain the origins of life on the Earth, there needs to be a manner by which such oligomers can increase their length and expand their sequence diversity. Oligomers longer than at least 10-20 nucleotides would be needed for raw material for subsequent natural selection. Here, we explore spontaneous RNA-RNA recombination as a facile means by which such length and diversity enhancement could have been realized. Motivated by the discovery that RNA oligomers stored for long periods of time in the freezer expand their lengths, we systematically investigated RNA-RNA recombination processes. In addition

SUBMITTER: Smail BA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6426292 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature