BI110 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: David Bartel, Thomas Cech, Ribozyme
Document Summary
Bi110-lecture 11-origins and early life of evolution (modules 73 and 74 (cont"d) Central dogma: info from dna gets transcripted to rna, then rna gets translated to amino acids (proteins)--reduce the rate of chemical and mutation damage to the genetic material. Ribozymes: rna molecules that catalyze specific reactions, cutting into the rna message; discovered by thomas cech. David bartel was able to develop, in vitro, a ribozyme that is capable of catalyzing the addition of ribonucleotides to an existing strand of rna. Employed in vitro evolution : started with a set of millions- billions of different large rna molecules. Selected the ribozymes with the best activity, randomly mutated the sequences, and repeated at least 18 times. Proteins became dominant structural and functional macromolecule of all cells. Tpna (thioester peptide nucleic acid): could allow for replication and ultimately the function of the dna recently synthesized molecule with properties that.