ArticleNature chemistry2013
RNA with iron(II) as a cofactor catalyses electron transfer.
Article in Nature chemistry, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 34 papers.
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Who cites it
34 citing papers in PubMed, 75 citations in OpenAlex.
- Chemical Routes to Primitive Membranes: Prebiotic Lipid Formation at the Origin of Life.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- RNA-Iron complexes catalyse prebiotic oxygen generation.Communications chemistry · 2026Article
- Complex and Messy Prebiotic Chemistry: Obstacles and Opportunities for an RNA World.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Protocellular Heme and Iron-Sulfur Clusters.Accounts of chemical research · 2024Review
- Could Life Have Started on Mars? Planetary Conditions That Assemble and Destroy Protocells.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Origin of ribonucleotide recognition motifs through ligand mimicry at early earth.RNA biology · 2024Review
- Pioneering role of RNA in the early evolution of life.Genetics and molecular biology · 2024Article
- On the Evolutionary History of the Twenty Encoded Amino Acids.Chemistry (Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, Germany) · 2022Review
- Reconsidering theACS bio & med chem Au · 2022Article
- Iron-responsive riboswitches.Current opinion in chemical biology · 2022Review
- The Peptidyl Transferase Center: a Window to the Past.Microbiology and molecular biology reviews : MMBR · 2021Article
- Interchangeable utilization of metals: New perspectives on the impacts of metal ions employed in ancient and extant biomolecules.The Journal of biological chemistry · 2021Review
- In search of the RNA world on Mars.Geobiology · 2021Article
- Iron-mediated degradation of ribosomes under oxidative stress is attenuated by manganese.The Journal of biological chemistry · 2020Article
- Cutting in-line with iron: ribosomal function and non-oxidative RNA cleavage.Nucleic acids research · 2020Article
- Emerging Frontiers in the Study of Molecular Evolution.Journal of molecular evolution · 2020Article
- Nucleic Acid Catalysis under Potential Prebiotic Conditions.Chemistry, an Asian journal · 2020Review
- Prebiotic Iron Originates the Peptidyl Transfer Origin.Molecular biology and evolution · 2019Article
- Considering planetary environments in origin of life studies.Nature communications · 2018Article
- Catalysis of Template-Directed Nonenzymatic RNA Copying by Iron(II).Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
11 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Mg(2+) is essential for RNA folding and catalysis. However, for the first 1.5 billion years of life on Earth RNA inhabited an anoxic Earth with abundant and benign Fe(2+). We hypothesize that Fe(2+) was an RNA cofactor when iron was abundant, and was substantially replaced by Mg(2+) during a period known as the 'great oxidation', brought on by photosynthesis. Here, we demonstrate that reversing this putative metal substitution in an anoxic environment, by removing Mg(2+) and replacing it with Fe(2+), expands the catalytic repertoire of RNA. Fe(2+) can confer on some RNAs a previously uncharacterized ability to catalyse single-electron transfer. We propose that RNA function, in analogy with protein function, can be understood fully only in the context of association with a range of possible metals. The catalysis of electron transfer, requisite for metabolic activity, may have been attenuated in RNA by photosynthesis and the rise of O2.
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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.