2020/08/18 by Patrick W. Kudella, Kudella, Patrick W., Alexei V. Tkachenko +5
Physics and Astronomy · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · #Origins and Evolution of Life #Evolution and Genetic Dynamics #Gene Regulatory Network Analysis
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2008.07823
The emergence of longer information-carrying and functional nucleotide\npolymers from random short strands was a major stepping stone at the dawn of\nlife. But the formation of those polymers under temperature oscillation\nrequired some form of selection. A plausible mechanism is template-based\nligation where theoretical work already suggested a reduction in information\nentropy. Here, we show how nontrivial sequence patterns emerge in a system of\nrandom 12mer DNA sequences subject to enzyme-based templated ligation reaction\nand temperature cycling. The strands acted both as a template and substrates of\nthe reaction and thereby formed longer oligomers. The selection for templating\nsequences leads to the development of a multiscale ligation landscape. A\nposition-dependent sequence pattern emerged with a segregation into mutually\ncomplementary pools of A-rich and T-rich sequences. Even without selection for\nfunction, the base pairing of DNA with ligation showed a dynamics resembling\nDarwinian evolution.\n