Sprecher
Beschreibung
Although clearly not prebiotically plausible, I will show that DNA origami presents an excellent model to understand how early forms of cell walls made of nucleic acids could have formed in order to achieve non-spherically shaped protocells. By making use of simple self-assembly reactions, DNA origami are able to form large assemblies and stabilizing lattice networks on lipid membranes, including protocell-like lipid vesicles [1,2]. Additional stabilization may be achieved through biomineralization of such structures [3]. Lipid vesicles, compared to modern cells and organisms are physically and mechanically not particularly stable towards different external environmental factors such as osmotic shocks as they are lacking a proper cell wall or cytoskeleton. Additionally, although compartmentalization is considered a key element for the emergence of life, there seemed to be very early appearances of distinct non-spherical compartment geometries. Modern nanotechnological tools may help us to understand how such anisotropic cell shapes came to be and how they were potentially even stabilized by early assemblies of nucleic acids. Although for simplicity we are employing DNA, our studies present important examples of symbiotic and regulatory interactions between primitive vesicle compartments and primitive genetic materials, which could equally have occurred in the realm of the more prebiotically relevant RNA world.
References:
1. Czogalla, A., Franquelim, H.G., Schwille, P. (2016) “DNA Nanostructures on Membrane sas Tools for Synthetic Biology.” Biophys. J., 110(8), 1698 – 1707.
2. Franquelim, H.G., Khmelinskaia, A., Sobczak, J.P., Dietz, H., Schwille, P. (2018) “Membrane sculpting by curved DNA origami scaffolds.” Nat. Commun., 9(1), 1-10.
3. Nguyen, L., Döblinger, M., Liedl, T., Heuer-Jungemann, A. (2019) „DNA Origami-Templated Silica Growth by Sol Gel Chemistry” Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 58(3), 912-916.
