Di Giulio M
International Institute of Genetics and Biophysics, CNR, Napoli, Italy.
J Theor Biol. 1995 Nov 7;177(1):95-101. doi: 10.1016/S0022-5193(05)80007-4.
Some sequences of transfer RNAs (tRNAs) which are believed to possess many of the characteristics of the ancestral sequence of this molecule are constructed. Analysis of these ancestral sequences seems to indicate that: (i) self-alignment of these sequences makes it possible for the 3'-half of the reconstructed molecule to display a significant similarity to the 5'-half, thus indicating that the two halves of tRNA might be paralogous, and (ii) the 5'-half of the ancestral tRNA can reconstruct an almost perfect hairpin structure. These observations give weight to the hypothesis suggesting that the primitive tRNA molecule may have originated through direct duplication of an ancient gene codifying for a hairpin structure.
构建了一些被认为具有该分子祖先序列许多特征的转运核糖核酸（tRNA）序列。对这些祖先序列的分析似乎表明：（i）这些序列的自我比对使得重建分子的3'端半部分与5'端半部分显示出显著的相似性，从而表明tRNA的两个半部分可能是旁系同源的；（ii）祖先tRNA的5'端半部分可以重建一个几乎完美的发夹结构。这些观察结果支持了这样一种假说，即原始tRNA分子可能起源于编码发夹结构的古老基因的直接复制。
