The RNA World and the origin of life: A short history of a tidy evolutionary narrative

Lazcano, Antonio

doi:10.1051/bioconf/20150400013

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Big questions such as the origin of Life or the origin of Man, are often treated as if such entities appeared from nothing, because Life, Man or his cultural traits are generally considered as completely different from anterior stages that would belong to another universe. This is for instance why the transition between the chemical world and the biological world is so much questioned [4][5][6][7]. This is also why the subject of synthetic Life is so striking as if it is an impossible or inacceptable performance for us to produce Life by ourselves [8,9].…”

Section: Depending On the Anterior Stagementioning

confidence: 99%

“…-To understand the origin of life and in the absence of detailed knowledge on the prebiotic environment and stages, biogenesis experiments are conducted, putting together the materials and the environment supposedly present, four billions years ago, to explore the possible working processes [4][5][6][7]. -Some terrestrial regions may be essential to understand the evolution of specific distributions or regional climates but these regions could have been subducted and melted by tectonic plates, or very rapidly eroded in ancient times.…”

Section: Different Kinds Of Deduction: Reconstructing Versus Modelingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The quest for the origins in evolutionary biology

Maurel

Grandcolas

2015

BIO Web of Conferences

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Abstract. Studying origins in evolutionary biology is an endeavour to reconstruct a chronicle of past events. Traditionally rooted in comparative biology and phylogenetics, these studies can also be conducted with either logical or experimental modelling approaches. The interaction between these two domains of inference -comparative reconstruction of the evolutionary past and modeling/experimenting the evolutionary process -must be encouraged. In both domains, the study of origins needs to be carefully designed to take into account anterior evolutionary stages on which they could depend. Comparative biology and past reconstruction must be performed on simple observational data (natural kinds), not on artificial general classes. And finally, understanding causality relationships calls for correlation approaches that must be optimized with regard to the number of natural replicates.The term "origin" is often employed when studying how some living organisms or their main characteristics appeared, or even how Life itself appeared. This term is generally considered as unambiguous [1], as it refers to very closely interrelated aspects: the early stage after which the organism or the characteristic appeared, the process that gave rise to the organism and its characteristics, the transition event between the anterior state and the state where the characteristic had already occurred, or even the characters in the anterior stage that allowed the emergence of the feature studied. This quest for the origins -a theme central to evolutionary biology -is a way to focus on special moments of evolution when some critical events occurred. It allows understanding evolutionary transitions that led to either large diversifications or to major qualitative changes and new evolutionary trajectories. This quest is traditionally rooted in systematic, comparative and paleontological studies. Yet many modeling or experimental approaches also strongly contribute to this field.The present book deals with methodological accounts or case studies at very diverse levels and scales in varied scientific domains of comparative or experimental evolutionary biology. It exemplifies how very different studies finally point to the same kind of prospects, depend on the same general methodological requirements and open similarly wide perspectives. These chapters are issued from the contributions presented during two workshops organized by the authors at the Institut de Systématique, Evolution, Biodiversité (Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, Paris) in 2013 and 2014. These workshops were intended to provide a room for discussion about the study of origins, a

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Section: Depending On the Anterior Stagementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Different Kinds Of Deduction: Reconstructing Versus Modelingmentioning

confidence: 99%

The quest for the origins in evolutionary biology

Maurel

Grandcolas

2015

BIO Web of Conferences

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Concurrent Prebiotic Formation of Nucleoside‐Amidophosphates and Nucleoside‐Triphosphates Potentiates Transition from Abiotic to Biotic Polymerization

et al. 2021

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Polymerization of nucleic acids in biology utilizes 5'nucleoside triphosphates (NTPs) as substrates.T he prebiotic availability of NTPs has been unresolved and other derivatives of nucleoside-monophosphates (NMPs) have been studied. However,t his latter approach necessitates ac hange in chemistries when transitioning to biology.H erein we show that diamidophosphate (DAP), in ao ne-pot amidophosphorylation-hydrolysis setting converts NMPs into the corresponding NTPs via 5'-nucleoside amidophosphates (NaPs). The resulting crude mixture of NTPs are accepted by proteinaceous-and ribozyme-polymerases as substrates for nucleic acid polymerization. This phosphorylation also operates at the level of oligonucleotides enabling ribozyme-mediated ligation. This one-pot protocol for simultaneous generation of NaPs and NTPs suggests that the transition from prebiotic-phosphorylation and oligomerization to an enzymatic processive-polymerization can be more continuous than previously anticipated.

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