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  • Review Article
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The RNA World: molecular cooperation at the origins of life

Nature Reviews Genetics volume 16, pages 7–17 (2015)Cite this article

Subjects

Key Points

  • Research into the RNA World paradigm is active, and new discoveries in synthetic organic chemistry and biochemistry routinely provide new insights.

  • The field of prebiotic chemistry is increasingly discovering phenomena that provide solutions to multiple (as opposed to single) problems simultaneously.

  • A key issue in RNA World research is how RNAs might have made copies of themselves (that is, how they replicated). There are now several possible mechanisms of this process, and increasing focus is being placed on those that display autocatalytic feedback.

  • Cooperation among various molecules was probably a key aspect of the RNA World, and at least three types of molecular cooperation could have been at play during the origins of life.

  • Chemical alternatives to RNA per se may have existed at some point in the Earth's earliest history, and many efforts are underway to find and evaluate such structures.

  • Network establishment was another process that had a large impact on the organization of the living state, from small molecules to large molecules and cell-like structures.

Abstract

The RNA World concept posits that there was a period of time in primitive Earth's history — about 4 billion years ago — when the primary living substance was RNA or something chemically similar. In the past 50 years, this idea has gone from speculation to a prevailing idea. In this Review, we summarize the key logic behind the RNA World and describe some of the most important recent advances that have been made to support and expand this logic. We also discuss the ways in which molecular cooperation involving RNAs would facilitate the emergence and early evolution of life. The immediate future of RNA World research should be a very dynamic one.

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Figure 1: Research in different fields is coming together to assemble a more complete picture of the way the RNA World began and operated.
Figure 2: RNA polymerases as altruistic cooperators.
Figure 3: Different senses of molecular cooperation.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank H. Lonsdale's Origin-of-Life Challenge for supporting the ideas and research mentioned in this work.

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  1. Origins Institute and Department of Physics and Astronomy, McMaster University, Hamilton, L8S 4M1, Ontario, Canada

    Paul G. Higgs

  2. Department of Chemistry, Portland State University, PO Box 751, Portland, 97207, Oregon, USA

    Niles Lehman

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  1. Paul G. Higgs
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  2. Niles Lehman
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Correspondence to Niles Lehman.

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Glossary

RNA riboswitches

RNA molecules that respond to environmental conditions by changing secondary structure — and, in some cases, by modulating catalytic function — thereby affecting gene expression.

Ligases

Enzymes that covalently join polymers using ATP-derived energy.

Cooperation

The phenomenon whereby two or more entities interact to provide benefits for themselves that are greater than those possible by the operations of the entities in isolation.

Protocells

Membrane-enclosed compartments that may not contain all the components of present-day cells but that were presumably capable of some rudimentary means of growth and division. They can also refer to artificial cell-like structures created in the laboratory.

Activated

In this context, pertaining to nucleotides that are primed with a high-energy bond to facilitate their condensation with other nucleotides.

Eutectic phase

A chemical mixture that has a lower freezing point than a composition of pure ingredients.

Class I ligase ribozyme

A ribozyme selected from a random pool of RNAs that can catalyse the ligation of an exogenous fragment of RNA to its own 5′ end.

Autocatalytic set

A collection of molecules that mutually cooperate in the sense that none of them can replicate without all the others, such that the reactions that form the components of the set are catalysed by other components of the set.

Altruism

When one individual provides a benefit to another while gaining no benefit itself (or even while suffering a detriment).

Hypercycles

Cooperative replicative sets of molecules in which hyperbolic growth is possible.

Error threshold

The theoretical maximum mutation rate that can sustain information genetic polymers of a particular length.

Group selection

Selection that acts on a group of entities as a whole (such as animals living in a social group or molecules inside a protocell) and that favours survival of the whole group, in contrast to selection acting on individual members of a group that leads to competition between the individuals.

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Higgs, P., Lehman, N. The RNA World: molecular cooperation at the origins of life. Nat Rev Genet 16, 7–17 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrg3841

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