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Published online 25 May 2004

Nucleic Acids Research, 2004, Vol. 32, No. 9 2966-2974
© 2004 Oxford University Press

Ligation activity of fragmented ribozymes in frozen solution: implications for the RNA world

Alexander V. Vlassov*,1,2, Brian H. Johnston1,3, Laura F. Landweber4 and Sergei A. Kazakov1

1 SomaGenics, Inc., 2161 Delaware Avenue, Santa Cruz, CA 95060, USA, 2 Institute of Chemical Biology and Fundamental Medicine, 8 Lavrentiev Avenue, Novosibirsk 630090, Russia, 3 Department of Pediatrics, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA 94305, USA and 4 Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA

*To whom correspondence should be addressed at SomaGenics, Inc., 2161 Delaware Avenue, Santa Cruz, CA 95060, USA. Tel: +1 831 426 7700; Fax: +1 831 420 0685; Email: avlassov{at}somagenics.com
Correspondence may also be addressed to Sergei A. Kazakov. Email: skazakov{at}somagenics.com

Received February 27, 2004; Revised and Accepted April 20, 2004

A vexing difficulty of the RNA world hypothesis is how RNA molecules of significant complexity could ever have evolved given their susceptibility to degradation. One way degradation might have been reduced is through low temperature. Here we report that truncated and fragmented derivatives of the hairpin ribozyme can catalyze ligation of a wide variety of RNA molecules to a given sequence in frozen solution despite having little or no activity under standard solution conditions. These results suggest that complex RNAs could have evolved in freezing environments on the early earth and perhaps elsewhere.


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