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Formation of Abasic Oligomers in Nonenzymatic Polymerization of Canonical Nucleotides

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dc.contributor.author MUNGI, CHAITANYA en_US
dc.contributor.author BAPAT, NIRAJA en_US
dc.contributor.author Hongo, Yayoi en_US
dc.contributor.author RAJAMANI, SUDHA en_US
dc.date.accessioned 2019-08-26T06:53:37Z
dc.date.available 2019-08-26T06:53:37Z
dc.date.issued 2019-07 en_US
dc.identifier.citation Life, 9(3). en_US
dc.identifier.issn 2075-1729 en_US
dc.identifier.uri http://dr.iiserpune.ac.in:8080/xmlui/handle/123456789/3818
dc.identifier.uri https://doi.org/10.3390/life9030057 en_US
dc.description.abstract Polymerization of nucleotides under prebiotically plausible conditions has been a focus of several origins of life studies. Non-activated nucleotides have been shown to undergo polymerization under geothermal conditions when subjected to dry-wet cycles. They do so by a mechanism similar to acid-catalyzed ester-bond formation. However, one study showed that the low pH of these reactions resulted in predominantly depurination, thereby resulting in the formation of abasic sites in the oligomers. In this study, we aimed to systematically characterize the nature of the oligomers that resulted in reactions that involved one or more of the canonical ribonucleotides. All the reactions analyzed showed the presence of abasic oligomers, with purine nucleotides being affected the most due to deglycosylation. Even in the reactions that contained nucleotide mixtures, the presence of abasic oligomers was detected, which suggested that information transfer would be severely hampered due to losing the capacity to base pair via H-bonds. Importantly, the stability of the N-glycosidic linkage, under conditions used for dry-wet cycling, was also determined. Results from this study further strengthen the hypothesis that chemical evolution in a pre-RNA World would have been vital for the evolution of informational molecules of an RNA World. This is evident in the high degree of instability displayed by N-glycosidic bonds of canonical purine ribonucleotides under the same geothermal conditions that otherwise readily favors polymerization. Significantly, the resultant product characterization in the reactions concerned underscores the difficulty associated with analyzing complex prebiotically relevant reactions due to inherent limitation of current analytical methods. en_US
dc.language.iso en en_US
dc.publisher MDPI en_US
dc.subject Prebiotic polymerization en_US
dc.subject Nucleotide oligomerization en_US
dc.subject Abasic oligomers en_US
dc.subject Nucleotide stability en_US
dc.subject Stability as a selection pressure en_US
dc.subject Dry-wet cycles en_US
dc.subject TOC-AUG-2019 en_US
dc.subject 2019 en_US
dc.title Formation of Abasic Oligomers in Nonenzymatic Polymerization of Canonical Nucleotides en_US
dc.type Article en_US
dc.contributor.department Dept. of Biology en_US
dc.identifier.sourcetitle Life en_US
dc.publication.originofpublisher Foreign en_US


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