Abiogenic Evolution of RNA and the Origin of Life

Origin of life on earth must be started from a story explaining how ribonucleic acids (RNAs) had been accumulated in azoic era. Since the world of nonazoic era could have been full of water, a single molecule of RNA should have been in danger of hydrolysis rather than in a tendency of progressive synthesis. It necessarily requires coevolution of proteins that had been playing a role of protecting RNA from hydrolysis. The present book describes a possibility of a large-scale of confined organic phosphates and methane hydrates under high pressure and temperature deeply hidden into the mantle of the earth. In such conditions, a polymeric form of D-ribose can be made as a left-handed helix connected by base pairs with neighboring strands. In the lattice of left-handed helices of RNA, a lot of spaces or gaps allowed accumulation of various amino acids, from the smallest one such as glycine to not very large as tryptophan. At the 3 end of a polymeric RNA strand, aminoacylation could also occur. The other essential substances to the origin of life, such as adenine-triphosphates, could have been accumulated together.

Kozo Nagano was promoted to Associate Professor at the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Tokyo, in 1971, and advanced to Senior Professor of the same department in 1993. Since 1980 he has been invited as a visiting professor to the Department of Ribosome Research of the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics, in Berlin.