Sprecher
Hannes Mutschler
(TU Dortmund, DE)
Beschreibung
Polynucleic acids such as RNA are thought to have played a central role in the origin of life on Earth. Similar to modern biology, replication and rearrangement of sequence information were most likely essential for the evolutionary development of simple life forms. However, neither the catalysts, cofactors, nor environmental conditions that were necessary for these reactions are known. Using ribozyme-based model systems, we are collaborating with other researchers to investigate the suitability of plausible non-equilibrium microenvironments and cofactors such as short peptides to promote RNA replication, early gene expression, horizontal gene transfer and phenotype-genotype coupling in model RNA protocells.
