ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2024
RNA-catalyzed evolution of catalytic RNA.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 35 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
35 citing papers in PubMed, 49 citations in OpenAlex.
- Exonuclease Ribozyme Encoded in a Circular Genome: On the Initiation of the RNA World.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- The Emergence of Life in the Light of Evolution.ArXiv · 2026Article
- MgJournal of the American Chemical Society · 2026Article
- A GTP synthase ribozyme with increased GTP turnover.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Sequence patterns in RNA replication via the virtual circular genome mechanism.Nucleic acids research · 2026Article
- De novo design of functional nucleic acids of aptamers.Nature computational science · 2026Article
- The selfish ribosome.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- A small polymerase ribozyme that can synthesize itself and its complementary strand.Science (New York, N.Y.) · 2026Article
- The selfish ribosome.ArXiv · 2026Article
- Complex and Messy Prebiotic Chemistry: Obstacles and Opportunities for an RNA World.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Illustration of the variable 1D sequences but conserved 2D and 3D structures of different ncRNA nanostructures for tracking the evolution and origin of organisms.Non-coding RNA research · 2026Article
- A symbiotic origin of the ribosome?PNAS nexus · 2026Article
- Brave new RNA world(s): from prebiotic chemistry to gene regulation and RNA technology.Frontiers in genetics · 2026Review
- Emergent Chemical Reactivity and Complexity of RNA Condensates.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2025Article
- The Origin of Life and Cellular Systems: A Continuum from Prebiotic Chemistry to Biodiversity.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Efficient Assembly of Functional RNA byJournal of the American Chemical Society · 2025Article
- Bifurcations and phase transitions in the origins of life.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Decoding the interactions and functions of non-coding RNA with artificial intelligence.Nature reviews. Molecular cell biology · 2025Review
- Exploring the space of self-reproducing ribozymes using generative models.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Polymerization and replication of primordial RNA induced by clay-water interface dynamics.Communications chemistry · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
An RNA polymerase ribozyme that was obtained by directed evolution can propagate a functional RNA through repeated rounds of replication and selection, thereby enabling Darwinian evolution. Earlier versions of the polymerase did not have sufficient copying fidelity to propagate functional information, but a new variant with improved fidelity can replicate the hammerhead ribozyme through reciprocal synthesis of both the hammerhead and its complement, with the products then being selected for RNA-cleavage activity. Two evolutionary lineages were carried out in parallel, using either the prior low-fidelity or the newer high-fidelity polymerase. The former lineage quickly lost hammerhead functionality as the population diverged toward random sequences, whereas the latter evolved new hammerhead variants with improved fitness compared to the starting RNA. The increase in fitness was attributable to specific mutations that improved the replicability of the hammerhead, counterbalanced by a small decrease in hammerhead activity. Deep sequencing analysis was used to follow the course of evolution, revealing the emergence of a succession of variants that progressively diverged from the starting hammerhead as fitness increased. This study demonstrates the critical importance of replication fidelity for maintaining heritable information in an RNA-based evolving system, such as is thought to have existed during the early history of life on Earth. Attempts to recreate RNA-based life in the laboratory must achieve further improvements in replication fidelity to enable the fully autonomous Darwinian evolution of RNA enzymes as complex as the polymerase itself.
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.