5 ms·
Qt45: A small polymerase ribozyme that can synthesize itself
- java-man 7mo ago2009 paper: Self-sustained replication of an RNA enzyme [0]. [0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19131595/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19131595/
- rcyeh 7mo agoAmazing! The 2009 Lincoln & Joyce paper you cited catalyzes one bond per hour on average. (Doubling time = 1 hour, but only one bond between oligonucleotides needed to double.) OP's Gianni et al 2026 paper connects 45 nucleotides, taking 72 days (1700 hours) to yield 0.2%. The latter effort is like drawing the whole owl. That is incredible patience. Without access to the full article, I read only the abstract. I wonder if they used simulations to narrow the candidates?
- java-man 7mo agohttps://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7618777/pdf/EMS212593.pdf https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7618777/pdf/EMS2125...
- Noumenon72 7mo agoI don't know if ChatGPT translated your rate for the 2026 paper right, but it says you mean: * 99.8% of the starting molecules fail to form the desired product * The ones that do, form 0.026 bonds per hour
- shablulman 7mo ago[flagged]
- cyberax 7mo agoIt's interesting, that we're getting down to the sizes of self-replicating RNA that realistically can form by a complete accident. Getting this sequence by random chance out of a pile of nucleotides is a 1 in 2^90 chance. That's around 1.2*10^27 or just around 20000 moles! Not at all an impossible number.
- jjk166 7mo agoNote that the Bennu asteroid sample had approximately 5 nanomoles of nucleotides per gram, meaning 20,000 moles of nucleotides could be delivered by a single 4 million ton asteroid, which if it were a spherical carbonaceous chondrite would be about 183 meters in diameter. An asteroid about that size impacts earth roughly every 36,000 years, and that mass of meteor material falls to earth each century. If primordial earth's oceans had nucleotide concentrations comparable to Bennu, then there would be about 10^39 nucleotides in the ocean.
- nkrisc 7mo agoIf raw materials isn’t the bottle neck for life every where, then what might it further down the line between oceans full of nucleotides and life? The oceans themselves?
- cousinbryce 7mo agoTemperature range and magnetic field are my first thoughts.
- dekhn 7mo agoI don't see any reason for the source molecules to come from space. We already know that nucleotides will spontaneously form and polymerize in conditions consistent with the early earth, and a meteorite origin just moves the source of those nucleotides elsewhere but doesn't answer how they formed.
- rolph 7mo agospace has been around for a lot longer than earth, its possible that inter planetary generation of nucleic acids may be primarily a matter of chemistry. Nucleobase synthesis in interstellar ices[2019] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12404-1?error=server_error#Abs1 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12404-1?error=ser... Chemistry of Abiotic Nucleotide Synthesis[2020] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.chemrev.9b00546 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.chemrev.9b00546
- dekhn 7mo agoSee also: Spiegleman's Monster
- panarchy 7mo agoQuinozyme
- guax 7mo agoWe haven't finished migrating from Qt5 and there is a v45 already? Jeez.
- pcrh 7mo agoThe pay wall doesn't permit much access to the details of this. A better summary is available at the UK's MRC website, link below. https://mrclmb.ac.uk/news-events/articles/bridging-the-gap-from-chemistry-to-life-discovery-of-a-tiny-rna-that-can-copy-itself/ https://mrclmb.ac.uk/news-events/articles/bridging-the-gap-f...