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The Dimeric Proto-Ribosome Within the Modern Ribosome

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Genesis - In The Beginning

Part of the book series: Cellular Origin, Life in Extreme Habitats and Astrobiology ((COLE,volume 22))

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Abstract

A structural element that could have existed independently in the prebiotic era was identified at the active site of the contemporary ribosome’s large subunit. It is suggested to have functioned as a proto-ribosome, catalyzing noncoded peptide bond formation and primitive elongation. This simple apparatus, constructed from a dimer of small, self-folding, stable RNA molecules, structurally related to tRNA, could have assembled spontaneously under prebiotic conditions. Its structure enabled the catalysis of peptide bond formation in the same manner that the contemporary ribosome exerts positional catalysis by accommodating the two reactants in a stereochemistry favorable for peptide bond formation. This prebiotic entity, which was efficient and stable enough to be retained by evolution as the highly conserved active site of the ribosome, was the matrix from which the modern protein biosynthesis mechanism – common to all living organisms – has evolved.

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Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to Ada Yonath for initiating the ribosome evolution study and to Amitai Halevi, Noam Adir, Sagi, and Nimrod Agmon for their help. Support was provided by the US National Inst. of Health (GM34360) and the Kimmelman Center for Macromolecular Assemblies.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Schulich Faculty of Chemistry, Institute for Advanced Studies in Theoretical Chemistry, Technion–Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel

    Ilana Agmon

  2. Fritz Haber Research Center for Molecular Dynamics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel

    Ilana Agmon

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  1. Ilana Agmon
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Correspondence to Ilana Agmon .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Jerusalem, Mevo Hadas 20, Efrat, 90435, Israel

    Joseph Seckbach

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Agmon, I. (2012). The Dimeric Proto-Ribosome Within the Modern Ribosome. In: Seckbach, J. (eds) Genesis - In The Beginning. Cellular Origin, Life in Extreme Habitats and Astrobiology, vol 22. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2941-4_32

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