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posted by LaminatorX on Wednesday April 08 2015, @12:48PM   Printer-friendly
from the come-together dept.

Phys.org is reporting on research published last month in Nature Communications, which suggests that spontaneous self-assembly of DNA is possible, and may have been robust enough to kick start the evolution of life on Earth.

From the phys.org article:

The self-organization properties of DNA-like molecular fragments four billion years ago may have guided their own growth into repeating chemical chains long enough to act as a basis for primitive life, says a new study by the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Milan.

While studies of ancient mineral formations contain evidence for the evolution of bacteria from 3.5 to 3.8 billion years ago—just half a billion years after the stabilization of Earth's crust—what might have preceded the formation of such unicellular organisms is still a mystery. The new findings suggest a novel scenario for the non-biological origins of nucleic acids, which are the building blocks of living organisms, said CU-Boulder physics Professor Noel Clark, a study co-author.

...

The discovery in the 1980's of the ability of RNA to chemically alter its own structure by CU-Boulder Nobel laureate and Distinguished Professor Tom Cech and his research team led to the development of the concept of an "RNA world" in which primordial life was a pool of RNA chains capable of synthesizing other chains from simpler molecules available in the environment. While there now is consensus among origin-of-life researchers that RNA chains are too specialized to have been created as a product of random chemical reactions, the new findings suggest a viable alternative, said Clark.

The new research demonstrates that the spontaneous self-assembly of DNA fragments just a few nanometers in length into ordered liquid crystal phases has the ability to drive the formation of chemical bonds that connect together short DNA chains to form long ones, without the aid of biological mechanisms. Liquid crystals are a form of matter that has properties between those of conventional liquids and those of a solid crystal—a liquid crystal may flow like a liquid, for example, but its molecules may be oriented more like a crystal.

"Our observations are suggestive of what may have happened on the early Earth when the first DNA-like molecular fragments appeared," said Clark.

 
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  • (Score: 2) by VortexCortex on Wednesday April 08 2015, @06:19PM

    by VortexCortex (4067) on Wednesday April 08 2015, @06:19PM (#167926)

    At sulphur spewing under sea vents we have found them lined with enzymes (another building block of life), which are self assembling across the thermal gradient. Relying solely on self-assembly of the DNA or RNA itself for the explanation of the origins of life while not taking coexisting complex enzyme formations into account, when these play an important role in our current replication systems, is more than a little bit silly.

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  • (Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Thursday April 09 2015, @02:35PM

    by opinionated_science (4031) on Thursday April 09 2015, @02:35PM (#168348)

    the key phrase is "self-assembly". With billions of years, the very first chemical mixture that becomes self-propagating, will yield an increase in that mixture.

    The fascinating question is whether or not *our* DNA/RNA metabolism has natural occurring alternatives....