ArticleNucleic acids research2017
Iron mediates catalysis of nucleic acid processing enzymes: support for Fe(II) as a cofactor before the great oxidation event.
Article in Nucleic acids research, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 35 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Reaction Mechanism and Metal Selectivity of Human SAMHD1 Elucidated by QM/MM Calculations.ACS catalysis · 2025Article
- Iron: Life's primeval transition metal.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Biofilm Microenvironment Activated Antibiotic Adjuvant for Implant-Associated Infections by Systematic Iron Metabolism Interference.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2024Article
- 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
- Discovering riboswitches: the past and the future.Trends in biochemical sciences · 2023Review
- Reconsidering theACS bio & med chem Au · 2022Article
- Iron-responsive riboswitches.Current opinion in chemical biology · 2022Review
- The Biochemical Landscape of Riboswitch Ligands.Biochemistry · 2022Article
- Metals Are Integral to Life as We Know It.Frontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2022Article
- In search of the RNA world on Mars.Geobiology · 2021Article
- Cutting in-line with iron: ribosomal function and non-oxidative RNA cleavage.Nucleic acids research · 2020Article
- Emergence of metal selectivity and promiscuity in metalloenzymes.Journal of biological inorganic chemistry : JBIC : a publication of the Society of Biological Inorganic Chemistry · 2019Review
- Multiple prebiotic metals mediate translation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2018Article
- Iron-dependent cleavage of ribosomal RNA during oxidative stress in the yeastThe Journal of biological chemistry · 2018Article
- In the Beginning was a Mutualism - On the Origin of Translation.Origins of life and evolution of the biosphere : the journal of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Life originated in an anoxic, Fe2+-rich environment. We hypothesize that on early Earth, Fe2+ was a ubiquitous cofactor for nucleic acids, with roles in RNA folding and catalysis as well as in processing of nucleic acids by protein enzymes. In this model, Mg2+ replaced Fe2+ as the primary cofactor for nucleic acids in parallel with known metal substitutions of metalloproteins, driven by the Great Oxidation Event. To test predictions of this model, we assay the ability of nucleic acid processing enzymes, including a DNA polymerase, an RNA polymerase and a DNA ligase, to use Fe2+ in place of Mg2+ as a cofactor during catalysis. Results show that Fe2+ can indeed substitute for Mg2+ in catalytic function of these enzymes. Additionally, we use calculations to unravel differences in energetics, structures and reactivities of relevant Mg2+ and Fe2+ complexes. Computation explains why Fe2+ can be a more potent cofactor than Mg2+ in a variety of folding and catalytic functions. We propose that the rise of O2 on Earth drove a Fe2+ to Mg2+ substitution in proteins and nucleic acids, a hypothesis consistent with a general model in which some modern biochemical systems retain latent abilities to revert to primordial Fe2+-based states when exposed to pre-GOE conditions.
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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.