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MBE Advance Access published online on March 16, 2005
Molecular Biology and Evolution, doi:10.1093/molbev/msi132
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© The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oupjournals.org
Accepted March 3, 2005

Research Article

Modern mRNA Proofreading & Repair: Clues that the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) Possessed an RNA Genome?

Anthony M. Poole 1* and Derek T. Logan 2

1 Department of Molecular Biology & Functional Genomics, Stockholm University, S-106 91, Stockholm, Sweden, Tel. +46 8 674 7958, Fax. +46 8 16 6488
2 Department of Molecular Biophysics, Lund University, Box 124, S-221 00 Lund, Sweden

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Anthony M. Poole, E-mail: anthony.poole{at}molbio.su.se


  Abstract

RNA repair has now been demonstrated to be a genuine biological process, and appears to be present in all three domains of life. In this article, we consider what this might mean for the transition from an early RNA-dominated world to modern cells possessing genetically encoded proteins & DNA. There are significant gaps in our understanding of how the modern protein-DNA world could have evolved from a simpler system, and it is currently uncertain whether DNA genomes evolved once or twice. Against this backdrop, the discovery of RNA repair in modern cells is timely food for thought, and brings us conceptually one step closer to understanding how RNA genomes were replaced by DNA genomes. We have examined the available literature on multisubunit RNA polymerase structure and function and conclude that a strong case can be made that the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) possessed a repair-competent RNA polymerase, which would have been capable of acting on an RNA genome. However, while this lends credibility to the proposal that the LUCA had an RNA genome, the alternative, that LUCA had a DNA genome, cannot be completely ruled out.

Keywords: RNA repair; DNA origins; Evolution; RNA polymerase; Proofreading; Last Universal Common Ancestor.
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