The eightfold path to non-enzymatic RNA replication

By J. Szostak. 2012

323 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The first RNA World models were based on the concept of an RNA replicase - a ribozyme that was a good enough RNA polymerase that it could catalyze its own replication. Although several RNA polymerase ribozymes have been evolved in vitro, the creation of a true replicase remains a great experimental challenge. At first glance the alternative, in which RNA replication is driven purely by chemical and physical processes, seems even more challenging, given that so many unsolved problems appear to stand in the way of repeated cycles of non-enzymatic RNA replication. Nevertheless the idea of non-enzymatic RNA replication is attractive, because it implies that the first heritable functional RNA need not have improved replication, but could have been a metabolic ribozyme or structural RNA that conferred any function that enhanced protocell reproduction or survival. In this review, I discuss recent findings that suggest that chemically driven RNA replication may not be completely impossible.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Genetics, Molecular Biology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6c181db9133b22c6f018fd8ab04652e474d106ca

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. N. Kitadai
2. S. Maruyama

In Genetics

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2. S. Maruyama

In Molecular Biology

1. N. Kitadai
2. S. Maruyama

Citations in the corpus

• Origins of building blocks of life: A review (2017, background): “In addition to the findings outlined above, considerable progress has been made toward elucidation of prebiotic pathways for nonenzymatic RNA replication (Schrum et al., 2010; Szostak, 2012; Blain and Szostak, 2014).”