Now it seems that the way RNA folds at low temperatures might offer a clue to how life began on Earth. The study reveals the outer limits of biochemistry that may have existed before modern RNA, a ‘sweeter-RNA world,’ or as Smuak said cryptically: “a cold-light lab.”
Now it seems that the way RNA folds at low temperatures might offer a clue to how life began on Earth. The study reveals the outer limits of biochemistry that may have existed before modern RNA, a ‘sweeter-RNA world,’ or as Smuak said cryptically: “a cold-light lab.”
The Remarkable Folding of RNA
In the genetic machinery of all living beings, intermediate between DNA and protein is found a key molecule named as Ribonucleic acid (RNA), which has its significance in the emergence and evolution of life. Although RNA is involved in many different functions, one element that hugely affects the range of activities it undertakes is its spatial conformation – the way that RNA folds around itself.
According to a new paper in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers have now come up with an explanation as to how RNA folds when it gets cold. The discovery, made by a research team led by Professor Fèlix Ritort (UB) shows how RNA sequences start to form well-organised, highly packed structures when the temperature reaches values lower than 20°C.
Both of these are quite novel, telling us that RNA stability and the function could be significantly amplified by how RNA interacts with surrounding water molecules. According to the researchers, hydrogen bonding of water molecules with the ribose sugar may be as important — or more so — than base pairing interactions in stabilizing the structure of RNA.
Peering into an RNA World of Sweet Beginnings
Such a discovery would not be merely of interest due to its implications for the biochemistry of modern organisms, These results suggest the potential for an even more “primitive,” or “coarse” biochemistry that came before RNA, centered on ribose-water interactions.
Within this primordial slurry of RNA, deamer and colleagues suggest that new advances in the ability of RNA to manufacture itself could have perhaps first arisen independently from biological life by taking advantage of cold temperatures often encountered on celestial bodies that are in constant thermal cycles of heat and cold near a star -a so-called ‘sweet-RNA world. However, A-U and G-C also pack effectively for the same stacking reasons28 together with additional narrower steric constraints31 on how riboses approach each other in space — in these conditions, the distillated anticooperatively constrained de-facto or actual minimization of ribose-water interactions versus standard A-U and G-C base-pairing might have been a significant factor under prebiotic circumstances that motivated early biochemical events to lead up eventually into RNA, thereby life as we know.
This opens a new window that is extremely relevant for the origins of life on Earth, and wherever you can find RNA in the universe. ” This indicates that the well-known RNA stabilization rules might have been preceded by an older, sugar-based system which could work in the harsher frigid conditions of the early cosmos.
Conclusion
The extraordinary twist of how RNA loops and folds itself at low temperatures as determined by the research team, paints an entirely new glimpse into the geological biochemistry that might have formed the basis for earliest life on Earth. This research suggests that a ‘sweet-RNA world may have taken form in the chill of interstellar space, where ribose-water interactions reined over base pairing rules. By the same token, to understand this primitive biochemistry would likewise enlighten how life’s earliest steps towards evolution may have originated and persevered in the universe.
