Abstract
We propose the existence of a relationship of stereochemical complementarity between gene sequences that code for interacting components: nucleic acid-nucleic acid, protein-protein and protein-nucleic acid. Such a relationship would impose evolutionary constraints on the DNA sequences themselves, thus retaining these sequences and governing the direction of the evolutionary process. Therefore, we propose that prebiotic, template-directed autocatalytic synthesis of mutally cognate peptides and polynucleotides resulted in their amplification and evolutionary conservation in contemporary prokaryotic and eukaryotic organisms as a genetic regulatory apparatus. If this proposal is correct, then the relationships between the sequences in DNA coding for these interactions constitute a life code of which the genetic code is only one aspect of the many related interactions encoded in DNA.
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Harris, L.F., Sullivan, M.R. & Hatfield, D.L. Directed Molecular Evolution. Orig Life Evol Biosph 29, 425–435 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1006683409144
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1006683409144