The Chemical Likelihood of Ribonucleotide-α-Amino acid Copolymers as Players for Early Stages of Evolution.

ABSTRACT: How ribosomal translation could have evolved remains an open question in most available scenarios for the early developments of life. Rather than considering RNA and peptides as two independent systems, this work is aimed at assessing the possibility of formation and stability of co-polymers or co-oligomers of α-amino acids and nucleotides from which translation might have evolved. Here we show that the linkages required to build such mixed structures have lifetimes of several weeks to months at neutral pH and 20 °C owing to the mutual protecting effect of both neighboring phosphoramidate and ester functional groups increasing their stability by factors of about 1 and 3 orders of magnitude, respectively. This protecting effect is reversible upon hydrolysis allowing the possibility of subse

SUBMITTER: Liu Z 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6443614 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature