2015-11-01
On the origin of sequence
Publication
Publication
Life , Volume 5 - Issue 4 p. 1629- 1637
Three aspects which make planet Earth special, and which must be taken in consideration
with respect to the emergence of peptides, are the mineralogical composition, the Moon which is
in the same size class, and the triple environment consisting of ocean, atmosphere, and continent.
GlyGly is a remarkable peptide because it stimulates peptide bond formation in the Salt-Induced
Peptide Formation reaction. The role glycine and aspartic acid play in the active site of RNA
polymerase is remarkable too. GlyGly might have been the original product of coded peptide
synthesis because of its importance in stimulating the production of oligopeptides with a high
aspartic acid content, which protected small RNA molecules by binding Mg 2+ ions. The feedback
loop, which is closed by having RNA molecules producing GlyGly, is proposed as the essential
element fundamental to life. Having this system running, longer sequences could evolve, gradually
solving the problem of error catastrophe. The basic structure of the standard genetic code (8 fourfold
degenerate codon boxes and 8 split codon boxes) is an example of the way information concerning
the emergence of life is frozen in the biological constitution of organisms: the structure of the code
contains historical information.
Additional Metadata | |
---|---|
, , , , | |
MDPI AG | |
doi.org/10.3390/life5041629 | |
Life | |
Organisation | Algorithms and Complexity |
van der Gulik, P. (2015). On the origin of sequence. Life, 5(4), 1629–1637. doi:10.3390/life5041629 |