ArticleNucleic acids research2012
Prebiotically plausible mechanisms increase compositional diversity of nucleic acid sequences.
Article in Nucleic acids research, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers.
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Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed, 77 citations in OpenAlex.
- Evolution from Composome to RNA Replicase.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Article
- Amino acids catalyse RNA formation under ambient alkaline conditions.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Selection-diversification interplay in oligonucleotide chemical evolution.Biophysics and physicobiology · 2025Article
- Protocell Effects on RNA Folding, Function, and Evolution.Accounts of chemical research · 2024Article
- Replication elongates short DNA, reduces sequence bias and develops trimer structure.Nucleic acids research · 2024Article
- Thermodynamic and Kinetic Sequence Selection in Enzyme-Free Polymer Self-Assembly inside a Non-equilibrium RNA Reactor.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Evolution towards increasing complexity through functional diversification in a protocell model of the RNA world.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Self-Reproduction and Darwinian Evolution in Autocatalytic Chemical Reaction Systems.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Review
- Structured sequences emerge from random pool when replicated by templated ligation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- The role of sugar-backbone heterogeneity and chimeras in the simultaneous emergence of RNA and DNA.Nature chemistry · 2019Article
- Limited Sequence Diversity Within a Population Supports Prebiotic RNA Reproduction.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2019Article
- Random-sequence genetic oligomer pools display an innate potential for ligation and recombination.eLife · 2018Article
- The Role of Templating in the Emergence of RNA from the Prebiotic Chemical Mixture.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2017Article
- Foldamer hypothesis for the growth and sequence differentiation of prebiotic polymers.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2017Article
- Prebiotic selection for motifs in a model of template-free elongation of polymers within compartments.PloS one · 2017Article
- The Effect of Limited Diffusion and Wet-Dry Cycling on Reversible Polymerization Reactions: Implications for Prebiotic Synthesis of Nucleic Acids.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2016Article
- The paradox of dual roles in the RNA world: resolving the conflict between stable folding and templating ability.Journal of molecular evolution · 2013Article
- Cascade of reduced speed and accuracy after errors in enzyme-free copying of nucleic acid sequences.Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2013Article
- Inter-Laboratory Variability in Array-Based RNA Quantification Methods.Genomics insights · 2013Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
During the origin of life, the biological information of nucleic acid polymers must have increased to encode functional molecules (the RNA world). Ribozymes tend to be compositionally unbiased, as is the vast majority of possible sequence space. However, ribonucleotides vary greatly in synthetic yield, reactivity and degradation rate, and their non-enzymatic polymerization results in compositionally biased sequences. While natural selection could lead to complex sequences, molecules with some activity are required to begin this process. Was the emergence of compositionally diverse sequences a matter of chance, or could prebiotically plausible reactions counter chemical biases to increase the probability of finding a ribozyme? Our in silico simulations using a two-letter alphabet show that template-directed ligation and high concatenation rates counter compositional bias and shift the pool toward longer sequences, permitting greater exploration of sequence space and stable folding. We verified experimentally that unbiased DNA sequences are more efficient templates for ligation, thus increasing the compositional diversity of the pool. Our work suggests that prebiotically plausible chemical mechanisms of nucleic acid polymerization and ligation could predispose toward a diverse pool of longer, potentially structured molecules. Such mechanisms could have set the stage for the appearance of functional activity very early in the emergence of life.
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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.