Small Cofactors May Assist Protein Emergence from RNA World: Clues from RNA-Protein Complexes
Liang Shen, Hong-Fang Ji*Shandong Provincial Research Center for Bioinformatic Engineering and Technique, Shandong University of Technology, Zibo, People's Republic of China
Abstract
It is now widely accepted that at an early stage in the evolution of life an RNA world arose, in which RNAs both served as the genetic material and catalyzed diverse biochemical reactions. Then, proteins have gradually replaced RNAs because of their superior catalytic properties in catalysis over time. Therefore, it is important to investigate how primitive functional proteins emerged from RNA world, which can shed light on the evolutionary pathway of life from RNA world to the modern world. In this work, we proposed that the emergence of most primitive functional proteins are assisted by the early primitive nucleotide cofactors, while only a minority are induced directly by RNAs based on the analysis of RNA-protein complexes. Furthermore, the present findings have significant implication for exploring the composition of primitive RNA, i.e., adenine base as principal building blocks.
Citation: Shen L, Ji H-F (2011) Small Cofactors May Assist Protein Emergence from RNA World: Clues from RNA-Protein Complexes. PLoS ONE 6(7): e22494. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0022494
Editor: Dov Joseph Stekel, University of Nottingham, United Kingdom
Received: May 9, 2011; Accepted: June 24, 2011; Published: July 18, 2011
Copyright: © 2011 Shen, Ji.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Funding: This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (30700113 and 30800184). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.* E-mail: jhf@sdut.edu.cn
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