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How DNA and RNA subunits might have formed to make the first genetic alphabet

Understanding the prebiotic origins of the nucleic acids is a long-standing challenge. The latest experiments support the idea that the first nucleic acid encoded information using a mixed ‘alphabet’ of RNA and DNA subunits.
  1. Kristian Le Vay

    1. Kristian Le Vay is in the Biomimetic Systems research group, Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Martinsried 82152, Germany.

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  2. Hannes Mutschler

    1. Hannes Mutschler is in the Biomimetic Systems research group, Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Martinsried 82152, Germany.

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The genetic polymers RNA and DNA are central to information storage in all biological systems, and as such form the core of most hypotheses about the origin of life. The most prominent of these theories is the ‘RNA world’ hypothesis, which posits that RNA was once both the central information-carrier and the catalyst for biochemical reactions on Earth before the emergence of life1. However, studies in the past few years (see ref. 2, for example) have suggested that the first genetic systems might have been based on nucleic-acid molecules that contain both RNA and DNA nucleotides, which then gradually self-separated into today’s RNA and DNA. Writing in Nature, Xu et al.3 offer fascinating experimental support for a mixed RNA–DNA world.

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Nature 582, 33-34 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-01566-4

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