Amazing stuff! Interesting hypothesis about the origins of life in the primordial soup!
In a few decades, humans will be able to create new forms of and modify existing forms of life like God! What a challenging journey ahead for humanity!
"New research explores mechanisms that boost RNA’s stability and resistance to hydrolysis"
"New research shows how complex molecules that were key to kickstarting life on the early Earth could have survived, despite their inherent instability. The findings suggest that self-assembly processes could have boosted RNA sequences’ resistance to hydrolysis, helping to ‘tame the chemical chaos’ in prebiotic mixtures. ..."
"The origins of life remain a major mystery. How were complex molecules able to form and remain intact for prolonged periods without disintegrating? A team ... has demonstrated a mechanism that could have enabled the first RNA molecules to stabilize in the primordial soup. When two RNA strands combine, their stability and lifespan increase significantly."
From the abstract:
"One of science’s greatest challenges is determining how life can spontaneously emerge from a mixture of molecules. A complicating factor is that life and its molecules are inherently unstable—RNA and proteins are prone to hydrolysis and denaturation. For the de novo synthesis of life or to better understand its emergence at its origin, selection mechanisms are needed for unstable molecules. Here we present a chemically fuelled dynamic combinatorial library to model RNA oligomerization and deoligomerization and shine new light on selection and purification mechanisms under kinetic control. In the experiments, oligomers can only be sustained by continuous production. Hybridization is a powerful tool for selecting unstable molecules, offering feedback on oligomerization and deoligomerization rates. Moreover, we find that templation can be used to purify libraries of oligomers. In addition, template-assisted formation of oligomers within coacervate-based protocells changes its compartment’s physical properties, such as their ability to fuse. Such reciprocal coupling between oligomer production and physical properties is a key step towards synthetic life."
New insights into the origins of life What gave the first molecules their stability? (original news release)
A Journey Towards Understanding the Stabilization of Labile Molecules "Life emerged from a mix of simple molecules. Here, we describe how stabilization mechanisms under kinetic control can tame the chemical chaos and lead to a stable copying process, the first step toward self-replication mechanisms, which are the heart of life."
Figure 1. Template-based copying controls selection in chemical-fueled libraries and alters the coacervate’s physical properties when happening inside of coacervates.
Fig. 2: Description of the chemically fuelled library.
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