ArticleScience (New York, N.Y.)2026
A small polymerase ribozyme that can synthesize itself and its complementary strand.
Article in Science (New York, N.Y.), 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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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.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed.
- Exonuclease Ribozyme Encoded in a Circular Genome: On the Initiation of the RNA World.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- How physiology solves the gene-centric impasse.Experimental physiology · 2026Review
- Structural and Thermodynamic Properties of RNA Molecules Using a Knowledge-Based Model.Journal of chemical theory and computation · 2026Article
- TheNon-coding RNA · 2026Article
- The Emergence of Life in the Light of Evolution.ArXiv · 2026Article
- Conditions Enabling the Persistence of Cooperating Synthetase, Ligase, and Mutation-Inhibitor Catalytic Polymers.Journal of molecular evolution · 2026Article
- The RNA-First Fallacy: Conflating Evolutionary Ancestry with Prebiotic Primacy.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Sequence patterns in RNA replication via the virtual circular genome mechanism.Nucleic acids research · 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
- Brave new RNA world(s): from prebiotic chemistry to gene regulation and RNA technology.Frontiers in genetics · 2026Review
- Efficient Assembly of Functional RNA byJournal of the American Chemical Society · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The emergence of a chemical system capable of self-replication and evolution is a critical event in the origin of life. RNA polymerase ribozymes can replicate RNA, but their large size and structural complexity impede self-replication and preclude their spontaneous emergence. Here, we describe QT45, a 45-nucleotide polymerase ribozyme, discovered from random sequence pools, that catalyzes general RNA-templated RNA synthesis using trinucleotide triphosphate (triplet) substrates in mildly alkaline eutectic ice. QT45 can synthesize both its complementary strand using a random triplet pool at 94.1% per-nucleotide fidelity and a copy of itself using defined substrates, both with yields of ~0.2% in 72 days. The discovery of polymerase activity in a small RNA motif suggests that polymerase ribozymes are more abundant in RNA sequence space than previously thought.
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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.