ArticleNucleic acids research2017
Analysis of in vitro evolution reveals the underlying distribution of catalytic activity among random sequences.
Article in Nucleic acids research, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 22 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed.
- Assembly of catalytic complexes from randomized oligonucleotides.Science advances · 2025Article
- Principles ofJournal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2025Article
- Optimized periphery-core interface increases fitness of the Bacillus subtilis glmS ribozyme.Nucleic acids research · 2024Article
- Protocell Effects on RNA Folding, Function, and Evolution.Accounts of chemical research · 2024Article
- Exploring the Landscape of Aptamers: From Cross-Reactive to Selective to Specific, High-Affinity Receptors for Cocaine.JACS Au · 2024Article
- Peptide conjugates with polyaromatic hydrocarbons can benefit the activity of catalytic RNAs.Chemical science · 2023Article
- A ribozyme that uses lanthanides as cofactor.Nucleic acids research · 2023Article
- Generative and interpretable machine learning for aptamer design and analysis of in vitro sequence selection.PLoS computational biology · 2022Article
- The Origin of Life: What Is the Question?Astrobiology · 2022Article
- A GTP-synthesizing ribozyme selected by metabolic coupling to an RNA polymerase ribozyme.Science advances · 2021Article
- Kinetic sequencing (k-Seq) as a massively parallel assay for ribozyme kinetics: utility and critical parameters.Nucleic acids research · 2021Article
- Quantifying the Evolutionary Constraints and Potential of Hepatitis C Virus NS5A Protein.mSystems · 2021Article
- Self-Reproduction and Darwinian Evolution in Autocatalytic Chemical Reaction Systems.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Review
- Thresholds in Origin of Life Scenarios.iScience · 2020Review
- A combinatorial method to isolate short ribozymes from complex ribozyme libraries.Nucleic acids research · 2020Article
- Phased nucleotide inserts for sequencing low-diversity RNA samples from in vitro selection experiments.RNA (New York, N.Y.) · 2020Article
- Comprehensive sequence-to-function mapping of cofactor-dependent RNA catalysis in the glmS ribozyme.Nature communications · 2020Article
- Emerging Frontiers in the Study of Molecular Evolution.Journal of molecular evolution · 2020Article
- On the emergence of structural complexity in RNA replicators.RNA (New York, N.Y.) · 2019Article
- Systematic minimization of RNA ligase ribozyme through large-scale design-synthesis-sequence cycles.Nucleic acids research · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The emergence of catalytic RNA is believed to have been a key event during the origin of life. Understanding how catalytic activity is distributed across random sequences is fundamental to estimating the probability that catalytic sequences would emerge. Here, we analyze the in vitro evolution of triphosphorylating ribozymes and translate their fitnesses into absolute estimates of catalytic activity for hundreds of ribozyme families. The analysis efficiently identified highly active ribozymes and estimated catalytic activity with good accuracy. The evolutionary dynamics follow Fisher's Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection and a corollary, permitting retrospective inference of the distribution of fitness and activity in the random sequence pool for the first time. The frequency distribution of rate constants appears to be log-normal, with a surprisingly steep dropoff at higher activity, consistent with a mechanism for the emergence of activity as the product of many independent contributions.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.