BIOC 4403 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Dna, Ribozyme, Transferase
27 Mar 2017
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Comparative biology: comparisons to infer biology of luca, what came first, dna or. Feasibility experiments: testing hypothesis re: origin of life. Chicken-egg problem: which came first, nucleic acids or proteins? (nucleic acids needed to make proteins, proteins needed to synthesize nucleic acids) Potential solution: nucleic acids were initially the storage of info and the replication machinery. (rna or dna?) Dna is a modified rna deoxyribonucleic acids derived from ribonucleic acids. Ribozymes: naturally occurring rna molecules capable of catalyzing chemical reactions on their own in the absence of proteins. Examples: group i and ii introns (self-splicing), hammerhead ribozymes, rnasep. The spliceosome appears to be a ribozyme. The ribosome is a ribozyme rrna forms core, ribosomal proteins on the outside, peptidyl transferase reaction is driven by rna snrnas: small nuclear rnas derived from group ii introns. Group ii introns: self-splicing element in bacterial, mitochondrial, plastid genomes; core splitting chemistry is identical to spliceosomal splicing.
