Thermodynamic and Kinetic Sequence Selection in Enzyme-Free Polymer Self-Assembly inside a Non-equilibrium RNA Reactor.

ABSTRACT: The RNA world is one of the principal hypotheses to explain the emergence of living systems on the prebiotic Earth. It posits that RNA oligonucleotides acted as both carriers of information as well as catalytic molecules, promoting their own replication. However, it does not explain the origin of the catalytic RNA molecules. How could the transition from a pre-RNA to an RNA world occur? A starting point to answer this question is to analyze the dynamics in sequence space on the lowest level, where mononucleotide and short oligonucleotides come together and collectively evolve into larger molecules. To this end, we study the sequence-dependent self-assembly of polymers from a random initial pool of short building blocks via templated ligation. Templated ligation requires two strands that ar

SUBMITTER: Goppel T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9032526 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature