Satterwhite Laura Elizabeth, Yeates Jessica A M, Lehman Niles
Department of Chemistry, Portland State University, Portland, OR 97202, USA.
Molecules. 2016 Sep 27;21(10):1293. doi: 10.3390/molecules21101293.
Origins-of-life research requires searching for a plausible transition from simple chemicals to larger macromolecules that can both hold information and catalyze their own production. We have previously shown that some group I intron ribozymes possess the ability to help synthesize other ribozyme genotypes by recombination reactions in small networks in an autocatalytic fashion. By simplifying these recombination reactions, using fluorescent anisotropy, we quantified the thermodynamic binding strength between two nucleotides of two group I intron RNA fragments for all 16 possible genotype combinations. We provide evidence that the binding strength () between the 3-nucleotide internal guide sequence (IGS) of one ribozyme and its complement in another is correlated to the catalytic ability of the ribozyme. This work demonstrates that one can begin to deconstruct the thermodynamic basis of information in prebiotic RNA systems.
生命起源研究需要探寻从简单化学物质到能够存储信息并催化自身合成的更大分子的合理转变过程。我们之前已经表明，一些I类内含子核酶具有通过自催化方式在小型网络中进行重组反应来帮助合成其他核酶基因型的能力。通过简化这些重组反应，并利用荧光各向异性，我们对16种可能的基因型组合的两个I类内含子RNA片段的两个核苷酸之间的热力学结合强度进行了量化。我们提供的证据表明，一种核酶的3核苷酸内部引导序列（IGS）与其在另一种核酶中的互补序列之间的结合强度（）与核酶的催化能力相关。这项工作表明，人们可以开始解构前体RNA系统中信息的热力学基础。
