ArticleMolecular biology and evolution2005
Modern mRNA proofreading and repair: clues that the last universal common ancestor possessed an RNA genome?
Article in Molecular biology and evolution, 2005. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 38 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
38 citing papers in PubMed, 82 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Emergence of Life in the Light of Evolution.ArXiv · 2026Article
- Universal paralogs provide a window into evolution before the last universal common ancestor.Cell genomics · 2026Review
- The Last Universal Common Ancestor of Ribosome-Encoding Organisms: Portrait of LUCA.Journal of molecular evolution · 2024Review
- RNA or DNA? Revisiting the Chemical Nature of the Cenancestral Genome.Journal of molecular evolution · 2024Article
- Review
- The Codon Usage in the Minimal Natural Cell.Origins of life and evolution of the biosphere : the journal of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life · 2021Article
- The Evolution of Reverse Gyrase Suggests a Nonhyperthermophilic Last Universal Common Ancestor.Molecular biology and evolution · 2019Article
- A planarian nidovirus expands the limits of RNA genome size.PLoS pathogens · 2018Article
- A Proposal of the Ur-proteome.Origins of life and evolution of the biosphere : the journal of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life · 2018Article
- Type IA topoisomerases can be "magicians" for both DNA and RNA in all domains of life.RNA biology · 2017Review
- The indefinable term 'prokaryote' and the polyphyletic origin of genes.Journal of genetics · 2017Article
- RNA topoisomerase is prevalent in all domains of life and associates with polyribosomes in animals.Nucleic acids research · 2016Article
- Does the Ribosome Challenge our Understanding of the RNA World?Journal of molecular evolution · 2016Article
- The origin and evolution of ribonucleotide reduction.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2015Review
- The case for an early biological origin of DNA.Journal of molecular evolution · 2014Article
- Systems biology perspectives on minimal and simpler cells.Microbiology and molecular biology reviews : MMBR · 2014Review
- Article
- Evolutionary history of the TBP-domain superfamily.Nucleic acids research · 2013Article
- Implications of altered replication fidelity on the evolution and pathogenesis of coronaviruses.Current opinion in virology · 2012Review
- Oxytricha as a modern analog of ancient genome evolution.Trends in genetics : TIG · 2012Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
RNA repair has now been demonstrated to be a genuine biological process and appears to be present in all three domains of life. In this article, we consider what this might mean for the transition from an early RNA-dominated world to modern cells possessing genetically encoded proteins and DNA. There are significant gaps in our understanding of how the modern protein-DNA world could have evolved from a simpler system, and it is currently uncertain whether DNA genomes evolved once or twice. Against this backdrop, the discovery of RNA repair in modern cells is timely food for thought and brings us conceptually one step closer to understanding how RNA genomes were replaced by DNA genomes. We have examined the available literature on multisubunit RNA polymerase structure and function and conclude that a strong case can be made that the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) possessed a repair-competent RNA polymerase, which would have been capable of acting on an RNA genome. However, while this lends credibility to the proposal that the LUCA had an RNA genome, the alternative, that LUCA had a DNA genome, cannot be completely ruled out.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.