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Origins of life

RNA made in its own mirror image

Nature volume 515, pages 347–348 (2014)Cite this article

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An RNA enzyme has been generated that can assemble a mirror-image version of itself. The finding helps to answer a long-standing conundrum about how RNA molecules could have proliferated on prebiotic Earth. See Letter p.440

Many organic and biological molecules come in right-handed and left-handed versions that are mirror-image twins of one another. These variations are referred to as D- and L-enantiomers, respectively. Modern RNA molecules are linear polymers that are synthesized from ribonucleotide monomers, and take the D-form. But on page 440 of this issue, Sczepanski and Joyce1 suggests that early evolution may have involved an interplay between the D- and L-structures of RNA.

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Figure 1: Possible mechanism for RNA replication on prebiotic Earth.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sandip A. Shelke and Joseph A. Piccirilli are in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA.,

    Sandip A. Shelke & Joseph A. Piccirilli

  2. J.A.P. is also in the Department of Chemistry, University of Chicago.,

    Joseph A. Piccirilli

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  1. Sandip A. Shelke
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  2. Joseph A. Piccirilli
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Correspondence to Joseph A. Piccirilli.

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Shelke, S., Piccirilli, J. RNA made in its own mirror image. Nature 515, 347–348 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature13935

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