Nucleic Acid Ribozyme Arrangement

You are not looking at a LGBTQ pride rainbow after a drinking binge. Nope, instead this image is an artistic representation of a type of nucleic acid arrangement called a RIBOZYME, and it perhaps is key to understanding some of the earliest history of all: the history of the origins of life.

We learned in Middle School biology about the existence of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), the self-replicating component of all our cells and the fundamental driver of human evolution. Crawl deeper into our memories and we might remember plain-old ribonucleic acid (RNA) the single-strand simpler and likely much older sibling of DNA. In life on earth today, we might be most familiar with RNA in terms of its existence in many viruses (like SARS-COV2). Unlike DNA, RNA strands are less sturdy, and thus shorter and more prone to genetic mutation.

However, many scientists focus on a vastly different roll for RNA, and this is one called the “RNA World-Hypothesis”. First discussed by Alexander Rich in 1962, the RNA World Hypothesis argues that the first expression of life arose in RNA, and that DNA evolved later. This idea was advanced in the early 1980s with the discovery of Altman and Cech (they got a Nobel Prize for this) of the RIBOZYME, a class of RNA that could not only replicate, but could act as an enzyme, or a chemical catalyst, for joining and splicing other RNA strands. These functions of reproduction and chemical catalysts made the RNA World Hypothesis a much more compelling argument. Scientists are not in agreement about this being the final word of the evolution of life, however.