San Francisco: Adding a new perspective to the origin of life on Earth, Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy Indian-born researcher from Scripps Research in California has discovered that DNA-RNA mixing initiated the first life form on our planet.
Krishnamurthy showed that a simple fertilizer called diamidophosphate (DAP), which was clearly present on Earth before life, could be chemically woven together tiny DNA building blocks called deoxynucleosides do iallan of primordial DNA.
The newly redefined chemical reaction may have accumulated DNA building blocks before life forms and their enzymes existed.
The discovery, published in chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie, is the latest in a series of discoveries, showing that DNA and its chemical cousin RNA may rise together as the results of similar chemical reactions, and that the first self-reproducing molecules – the first life forms on Earth – were a combination of the two.
“This discovery is an important step toward the development of a detailed chemical model of how the first life forms began on Earth,” said senior study author Krishnamurthy, associate professor of chemistry at Scripps Research.
In particular, this finding is a means for more extensive studies of how the self-reproducing DNA-RNA combination may have evolved and spread on the primordial Earth and ultimately reproducing the more mature biology of modern organisms. The new work can also have broad practical applications.
The artificial synthesis of DNA and RNA – for example in the “PCR” method that is the basis of COVID-19 tests – is becoming a major global industry, but it is dependent on an enzyme that is relatively sensitive and those that have many limitations.
Strong, enzyme-free chemical methods may make DNA and RNA more attractive in many situations, Krishnamurthy said. In 2017, a team led by Krishnamurthy reported that the organic component of DAP may have played an important role in modifying ribonucleosides and stringing them together in the first RNA strands.
The new study shows that DAP under similar conditions could have done the same for DNA. “Now that we have a better understanding of how primordial chemistry may have first produced RNA and DNA, we can begin to use it on a combination of ribonucleoside and deoxynucleoside building blocks to see what chimney molecules that are formed – and can self-produce and evolve. , “Krishnamurthy explained.