Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Center for RNA Biology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210, USA
Institute of Biophysics, Ilia State University, Tbilisi 0162, Republic of Georgia
RNA. 2023 Sep;29(9):1317-1324. doi: 10.1261/rna.079613.123. Epub 2023 Jun 7.
The main goal of the origin of life (OoL) hypothesis is to reconstruct the missing link between the primordial soup and the extant biology. However, the OoL itself is just the initial part of the link representing the bootstrapping operation of Darwinian evolution. The rest of the link is the emergence of the evolution to the present day primary biological system-the ribosome-based translation apparatus. A valid hypothesis must (i) not invoke Darwinian evolution in the bootstrapping and (ii) transform the ab initio life form into the translation apparatus without violating the principle of continuity (i.e., only incremental steps without foresight). Currently, no such hypothesis exists. Here, I discuss the Quadruplex World hypothesis, which fully complies with these requirements and suggests a spontaneous emergence of the ab initio life form. The spontaneity of OoL arises from the physicochemical properties of guanine monomers in a manner of causal determinism: each step of the process (i.e., scaffolding, polymerization, and folding) is caused by the most recent past step such that in the end only the specific 3D architecture forms. The architecture (i) has a length-independent folding pattern; (ii) can play the role of the predecessor of tRNA and single-handedly conduct a primitive form of translation; and (iii) can evolve into the extant translation apparatus without any paradoxes.
生命起源假说的主要目标是在原始汤和现存生物学之间重建缺失的环节。然而，生命起源本身只是这个环节的初始部分，代表了达尔文进化的自举操作。该环节的其余部分是进化到现今的基本生物系统——基于核糖体的翻译装置。一个有效的假说必须(i)不在自举中引入达尔文进化，以及(ii)将最初的生命形式转化为翻译装置，而不违反连续性原则（即只有渐进的步骤，没有先见之明）。目前，还没有这样的假说存在。在这里，我将讨论四联体世界假说，它完全符合这些要求，并提出了最初生命形式的自发出现。生命起源的自发性源于鸟嘌呤单体的物理化学性质，以因果决定论的方式出现：该过程的每一步（即支架、聚合和折叠）都是由最近的前一步引起的，以至于最终只有特定的 3D 结构形成。该结构(i)具有与长度无关的折叠模式；(ii)可以充当 tRNA 的前身，并独自进行原始形式的翻译；(iii)可以进化为现存的翻译装置，而不会产生任何悖论。
