Amino acids catalyse RNA formation under ambient alkaline conditions

Saroj K. Rout, Sreekar Wunnava, Miroslav Krepl, Giuseppe Cassone, Judit E. Šponer, Christof B. Mast, Matthew W. Powner and Dieter Braun ()
Additional contact information
Saroj K. Rout: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Sreekar Wunnava: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Miroslav Krepl: Institute of Biophysics of the Czech Academy of Sciences
Giuseppe Cassone: National Research Council of Italy (IPCF-CNR)
Judit E. Šponer: Institute of Biophysics of the Czech Academy of Sciences
Christof B. Mast: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Matthew W. Powner: University College London
Dieter Braun: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

Nature Communications, 2025, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract RNA and proteins are the foundation of life and a natural starting point to explore its origins. However, the prebiotic relationship between the two is asymmetric. While RNA evolved to assemble proteins from amino acids, a significant mirror-symmetric effect of amino acids to trigger the synthesis of RNA was missing. We describe ambient alkaline conditions where amino acids, without additional chemical activators, promote RNA copolymerisation more than 100-fold, starting from prebiotically plausible ribonucleoside-2′,3′-cyclic phosphates. The observed effect is explained by acid-base catalysis, with optimal efficiency at pH values near the amine pKaH. The fold-change in oligomerisation yield is nucleobase-selective, resulting in increased compositional diversity necessary for subsequent molecular evolution and favouring the formation of natural 3′−5′ linkages. The elevated pH offers recycling of oligonucleotide sequences back to 2′,3′-cyclic phosphates, providing conditions for high-fidelity replication by templated ligation. The findings reveal a clear functional role of amino acids in the evolution of RNA earlier than previously assumed.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-60359-3 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:16:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-025-60359-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-60359-3

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().