ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2015
History of the ribosome and the origin of translation.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 160 papers.
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160 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- The history of enzyme evolution embedded in metabolism.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Evolution of a core ribosomal innovation in octopus.Current biology : CB · 2026Article
- The Emergence of Life in the Light of Evolution.ArXiv · 2026Article
- Evolution of a core ribosomal innovation in octopus.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Yield and fidelity of early steps of ribosome-free translation depend on the RNA anchoring.Nucleic acids research · 2026Article
- A family of ribosome hibernation factors widespread in Archaea.Nature communications · 2026Article
- The selfish ribosome.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Coevolution of RNase P and the ribosome.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- The selfish ribosome.ArXiv · 2026Article
- RNA-Iron complexes catalyse prebiotic oxygen generation.Communications chemistry · 2026Article
- A symbiotic origin of the ribosome?PNAS nexus · 2026Article
- The Origin of Life and Cellular Systems: A Continuum from Prebiotic Chemistry to Biodiversity.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Origins of life: the possible and the actual.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Science of the gaps.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Review
- Ribosomal protein Rps29/uS14 contributes to 18S rRNA maturation and its abundance regulates osmotic stress response in S. cerevisiae.Nucleic acids research · 2025Article
- Evaluating computational tools for protein-coding sequence detection: Are they up to the task?RNA (New York, N.Y.) · 2025Article
- Structure of an archaeal ribosome reveals a divergent active site and hibernation factor.Nature microbiology · 2025Article
- The biological and evolutionary consequences of competition between DNA sequences that benefit the cell and DNA sequences that benefit themselves.Nucleic acids research · 2025Review
100 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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11 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
We present a molecular-level model for the origin and evolution of the translation system, using a 3D comparative method. In this model, the ribosome evolved by accretion, recursively adding expansion segments, iteratively growing, subsuming, and freezing the rRNA. Functions of expansion segments in the ancestral ribosome are assigned by correspondence with their functions in the extant ribosome. The model explains the evolution of the large ribosomal subunit, the small ribosomal subunit, tRNA, and mRNA. Prokaryotic ribosomes evolved in six phases, sequentially acquiring capabilities for RNA folding, catalysis, subunit association, correlated evolution, decoding, energy-driven translocation, and surface proteinization. Two additional phases exclusive to eukaryotes led to tentacle-like rRNA expansions. In this model, ribosomal proteinization was a driving force for the broad adoption of proteins in other biological processes. The exit tunnel was clearly a central theme of all phases of ribosomal evolution and was continuously extended and rigidified. In the primitive noncoding ribosome, proto-mRNA and the small ribosomal subunit acted as cofactors, positioning the activated ends of tRNAs within the peptidyl transferase center. This association linked the evolution of the large and small ribosomal subunits, proto-mRNA, and tRNA.
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