In the Beginning was a Mutualism - On the Origin of Translation

Vitas, Marko; Dobovišek, Andrej

doi:10.1007/s11084-018-9557-6

Cited by 32 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 159 publications

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“…We therefore suggest that the associations suggested by Copley et al may indeed have been some of the first steps on route to a purely chemical (independent of UVC photons) biosynthetic pathway of the simple amino acids, but that this probably appeared much later in the evolutionary history of life, i.e. much after the appearance of stereochemical associations discovered by Yarus et al [44] and before the emergence and subsequent molecular evolution of translation ribosomes and enzymes [80].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 68%

Entropy Production as the Origin of Information Encoding in RNA and DNA

Mejía¹,

Michaelian²

2019

Preprint

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Ultraviolet light incident on organic material can initiate its spontaneous dissipative structuring into chromophores which can catalyze their own replication. This may have been the case for one of the most ancient of all chromophores dissipating the Archean UVC photon flux, the nucleic acids. Oligos of nucleic acids with affinity to particular amino acids which foment UVC photon dissipation would have been selected through non-equilibrium thermodynamic imperatives which favor entropy production. Indeed, we show here that those amino acids with characteristics most relevant to fomenting UVC photon dissipation are precisely those with greatest chemical affinity to their codons or anticodons. Entropy production could thus provide an explanation for the accumulation of information in nucleic acids relevant to the dissipation of the externally imposed thermodynamic potentials. The accumulation of information in this manner provides a link between evolution and entropy production.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 68%

Entropy Production as the Origin of Information Encoding in RNA and DNA

Mejía¹,

Michaelian²

2019

Preprint

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“…2. In order for simple bioorganic molecules to be assembled into more complex hetero-biomolecules, they also have to be stereochemically compatible with each other: in other words, there must be "molecular mutualism" (Lanier et al 2017;Vitas and Dobovišek 2018). Key examples of such "molecular mutualism" include that only some amino acids or peptides can bind with simple RNAs or that only some peptides can form α-helixes and then insert themselves into lipid membranes to make lipid membranes more permeable.…”

Section: Core Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Origin(s) of Cell: Some Radical New Hypotheses

Tang¹

2020

Preprint

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The central mechanism of biological evolution, variation-selection-inheritance (VSI), is one of the most universal mechanisms known. Much of our understanding of VSI, however, has been dominated by the Neo-Darwinian Modern Synthesis with a rather narrow understanding of what constitutes variation, selection, and inheritance. This unduly narrow understanding of VSI might have been a key cause behind our failure to adequately explain some critical puzzles in biological evolution, from the origin of the first cell to the origin of the eukaryotes, the puzzling biology of metabolism, apoptosis, aging, and cancer in metazoan.I broaden our understanding of VSI, in a spirit that is somewhat similar to several recent contributions and then extend this broadened view of VSI to its natural starting point: the origin of the First Universal Cell Ancestor (FUCA). I advance three principal arguments. First, survival comes before replication. Before the coming of reproducer and replicator, there must be survivors, to paraphrase Szathmary and Maynard Smith (1997). Second, natural selection, especially the non-Darwinian kind, can operate without replication or even metabolism, as long as different molecules, complexes, and vesicles have differential survival rate within a system. Third, merger and acquisition, via breaking-and-re-encapsulation, endocytosis, endosymbiosis, and processes similar to them, had been a far more powerful force of variation and selection in the pre-Darwinian period of evolution that led to LUCA and long before eukaryogenesis. Endosymbiosis therefore had been a far more foundational force than even Lynn Margulis and many of her supporters have appreciated. Our thesis thus goes beyond Woese’s emphasis of horizontal gene transfer (HGT) and actually subsumes HGT with Margulis’ emphasis of endosymbiosis. Combing these three new perspectives with other perspectives and evidence sheds important new light upon the origin of FUCA, the singular water-shedding moment in the evolution of life.

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“…Genetic information is molecular memory recorded by triplet codon, but its origin has been investigated and debated for a long time (e.g., [1,2,3,4,5]. It is a miracle of nature that a set of genetic codes was able to produce tens of millions of different species on the earth.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

ATP-Hypothesis: A New Conceptual Framework for the Origins of Genetic Codes

Xie¹

2020

Preprint

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The origin of genetic codes is the key to reveal life’s origin on the earth as it is a prerequisite for the existence of life. More than half a century has passed since the discovery of genetic codes, while their origin is still one of the greatest mysteries. Are the origins of genetic codes really unknowable? Do they really require external design? Here, I present an ATP-hypothesis that explains how the genetic codes came into being with the coevolution of biochemical system. ATP has several properties that make it suitable as the initiator of the origin of genetic codes. First, ATP is the only energetic product of photosynthesis. Second, ATP is at the heart of the extant biochemical systems. Third, ATP serves as carriers of both energy and information. Fourth, ATP could energetically elongate chains of both polynucleotides and polypeptides, thus providing a bridge between them, and eventually mediating prebiotic biochemical transaction from energy to information. This hypothesis shows how primitive life emerged through a series of processes from energy to information mediated by ATP. Informatization (processes of creating and managing information) was inevitably coupled with structuralization (processes of organizing or incorporating into a cellular structure), making polynucleotides and polypeptides be cyclized into a system of reciprocal causation. The triplet codon might just be for stereo-chemical handing of amino acid through e.g. Watson–Crick pairing interactions. It is an evolutionary completion for genetic codes from RNA to DNA, only which, a reverse to the Central Dogma, marked the dawn of cellular life when Darwinian evolution began to operate. ATP-hypothesis shades lights on the origin of life, together with the formations of both photosynthesis and biochemical systems, which have been largely unknown so far.

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In the Beginning was a Mutualism - On the Origin of Translation

Cited by 32 publications

References 159 publications

Entropy Production as the Origin of Information Encoding in RNA and DNA

Entropy Production as the Origin of Information Encoding in RNA and DNA

The Origin(s) of Cell: Some Radical New Hypotheses

ATP-Hypothesis: A New Conceptual Framework for the Origins of Genetic Codes

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