Simple RNA Fusion Resulted in Origin of Life on Earth!

A report published by American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology has demonstrated how ancient RNA might have joined together to reach a biologically relevant length. The report also discussed the simple fusion process of RNA that must have lead to the initiation of origin of life on our planet.

It is well-known that Ribonucleic acid or RNA is a precursor to DNA. RNA normally expands one nuclei base at a time and grows into a sequentially linked chain. The main problem with this expansion is that RNA molecules do not have the enzymes to catalyze their linking process. Although RNA growth proceeds naturally but it happens at a very slow pace.

Ernesto Di Mauro and colleagues, in their research on “Nonenzymatic RNA ligation in water” examined whether there was some mechanism to overcome the slow process of RNA linkages or not. They tried to overcome this thermodynamic barrier by incubating short RNA fragments in water of different temperatures and pH.

It was found that under favorable conditions, RNA fragments ranging from 10-24 in length could naturally fuse in to larger fragments generally within 14 hours. These favorable conditions are found to be acidic environments at temperatures lower than 70 degrees Celsius.

The researchers found that RNA fragments of different sizes would have come together as double standards and then join at ends. It is believed that the efficiency of these reactions depend on the size of RNA fragments, larger the better but even in this case, RNA fragments exceeding 100 would not react fast because efficiency drops after reaching around 100 bases.

So far, researchers think that this spontaneous fusion and ligation under favorable conditions would have been the simplest way for RNA to overcome initial barriers of growth in reaching a biologically significant size. It is believed that at around 100 bases long, RNA can begin to fold into functional 3D molecules thus initiating the divine process of evolution – a prelude to origin of life on Earth.