Perspectives
The eightfold path to non-enzymatic RNA replication
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Correspondence: Jack W Szostak szostak@molbio.mgh.harvard.edu
Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Department of Molecular Biology and Center for Computational and Integrative Biology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Simches Research Center, 185 Cambridge Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02114, USA
Journal of Systems Chemistry 2012, 3:2 doi:10.1186/1759-2208-3-2
Published: 3 February 2012Abstract
The first RNA World models were based on the concept of an RNA replicase - a ribozyme that was a good enough RNA polymerase that it could catalyze its own replication. Although several RNA polymerase ribozymes have been evolved in vitro, the creation of a true replicase remains a great experimental challenge. At first glance the alternative, in which RNA replication is driven purely by chemical and physical processes, seems even more challenging, given that so many unsolved problems appear to stand in the way of repeated cycles of non-enzymatic RNA replication. Nevertheless the idea of non-enzymatic RNA replication is attractive, because it implies that the first heritable functional RNA need not have improved replication, but could have been a metabolic ribozyme or structural RNA that conferred any function that enhanced protocell reproduction or survival. In this review, I discuss recent findings that suggest that chemically driven RNA replication may not be completely impossible.