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Origin of Life and Evolution of Biospheres 2007, 37, 399-401
How did translation occur ?
A panel contribution by Peter Strazewski
 We have not yet reached a generally accepted view on how the genetic code might have originated. A Darwinian certainty is that the genetic code evolved to reliably and repeatedly produce the same functional polypeptides, which itself create the phenotype, from the corresponding inheritable information carriers, the genotype. The system that translates the genetic code stored in primary sequences of nucleic acids into functional proteins is nowadays a complex and huge machinery that we call the ribosome plus associated proteins. It began as a crucial primordial supramolecular system, an early achievement that elaborately evolved into what it is today. At what stage of evolution did it begin? How did the mutual control between nucleic acids and proteins originate? Can we experimentally reconstruct the gain of control of nucleic acids over proteins? Are lipidic membranes a prerequisite for RNA-controlled protein synthesis? How to resolve a pertinent hen-and-egg question? What has been proposed so far? The main part of the contribution to the panel discussion was devoted to recall to the audience the chronological order of publications the main aim of which it was, at least theoretically, to somehow connect physico-chemical properties of physically proximal universal adapters, usually some kind of nucleic acid polymer, with reactive forms of physically proximal amino acids that would subsequently polymerise into polypeptides.
Keywords:
Genetic code ; translation ; peptidyl-RNA ; peptidyl transfer ; amphiphiles.
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