ArticleNature chemistry2015
Freeze-thaw cycles as drivers of complex ribozyme assembly.
Article in Nature chemistry, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 70 papers.
What it found
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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
70 citing papers in PubMed, 148 citations in OpenAlex.
- Sequence patterns in RNA replication via the virtual circular genome mechanism.Nucleic acids research · 2026Article
- Theory for sequence selection via phase separation and oligomerization.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- The secret life of RNA and lipids.RNA biology · 2025Review
- Article
- The "Bagno dell'Acqua" Lake as a Novel Mars-like Analogue: Prebiotic Syntheses of PNA and RNA Building Blocks and Oligomers.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Article
- Trinucleotide substrates under pH-freeze-thaw cycles enable open-ended exponential RNA replication by a polymerase ribozyme.Nature chemistry · 2025Article
- Engineering of Small Ribozymes Acting on RNA: What is Needed to Make a New Function Work with an Existing Catalyst?Chembiochem : a European journal of chemical biology · 2025Review
- Assembly of catalytic complexes from randomized oligonucleotides.Science advances · 2025Article
- Origin of the RNA World in Cold Hadean Geothermal Fields Enriched in Zinc and Potassium: Abiogenesis as a Positive Fallout from the Moon-Forming Impact?Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Do-Nothing Prebiotic Chemistry: Chemical Kinetics as a Window into Prebiotic Plausibility.Accounts of chemical research · 2025Article
- Selection-diversification interplay in oligonucleotide chemical evolution.Biophysics and physicobiology · 2025Article
- High-Fidelity RNA Copying via 2',3'-Cyclic Phosphate Ligation.Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2024Article
- Nonequilibrium Wet-Dry Cycling Acts as a Catalyst for Chemical Reactions.The journal of physical chemistry. B · 2024Article
- Origin & influence of autocatalytic reaction networks at the advent of the RNA world.RNA biology · 2024Review
- Ratcheting synthesis.Nature reviews. Chemistry · 2024Review
- Accelerating DNA computing via freeze-thaw cycling.Science advances · 2023Article
- Article
- Mixed anhydrides at the intersection between peptide and RNA autocatalytic sets: evolution of biological coding.Interface focus · 2023Article
- Periodic temperature changes drive the proliferation of self-replicating RNAs in vesicle populations.Nature communications · 2023Article
- A Physicochemical Consideration of Prebiotic Microenvironments for Self-Assembly and Prebiotic Chemistry.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Review
10 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
The emergence of an RNA catalyst capable of self-replication is considered a key transition in the origin of life. However, how such replicase ribozymes emerged from the pools of short RNA oligomers arising from prebiotic chemistry and non-enzymatic replication is unclear. Here we show that RNA polymerase ribozymes can assemble from simple catalytic networks of RNA oligomers no longer than 30 nucleotides. The entropically disfavoured assembly reaction is driven by iterative freeze-thaw cycles, even in the absence of external activation chemistry. The steep temperature and concentration gradients of such cycles result in an RNA chaperone effect that enhances the otherwise only partially realized catalytic potential of the RNA oligomer pool by an order of magnitude. Our work outlines how cyclic physicochemical processes could have driven an expansion of RNA compositional and phenotypic complexity from simple oligomer pools.
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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.