Chainlike molecules stick RNA to a protocell membrane, an essential connection
By andA model protocell, about 100 nanometers wide.
Electrostatic interactions induced by short, positively charged, hydrophobic peptides . The discovery provides new insight into how RNA and membranes could have come together to form protocells – precursors to life – 4 billion years ago on Earth.
Nobel laureate and his team at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, US, found that peptides just seven amino acids long or fewer can localise RNA to a basic cell membrane. ‘This mechanism is really quite simple and has been used in other fields to form RNA complexes with a variety of materials,’ says , the first author of the paper. ‘The simplicity of our system is what makes this mode of RNA-membrane association seem plausible on a primitive Earth.’
‘The manuscript provides original data, opening a novel branch in origin of life research,’ says , who works on prebiotic evolution at the University of Nice, France. ‘The applied experimental techniques have been adapted to both dynamically characterise the vesicles and allow the binding of specific molecules on the vesicular surfaces. This is not a trivial task.’
‘The first forms of life were likely to be simple cells containing systems of peptides and short strands of a nucleic acid such as RNA,’ explains , a chemist who works on membrane evolution at the University of California, Santa Cruz, US. ‘The results provide significant insight into the way that protocellular systems could have spontaneously assembled on the prebiotic Earth 4 billion years ago, an essential first step toward the origin of cellular life.’
Chemistry World. The article was
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