Abstract
Stereochemical assignment of amino acids and corresponding codons or anticodons has not been successful so far. Here, we focused on proline and GGG (anticodon of tRNAPro) and investigated their mutual interaction. Circular dichroism spectroscopy revealed that guanosine nucleotides (GG, GGG) formed G-quartet structures. The structures were destroyed by adding high concentrations of proline. We propose that the possibility of the reversible proline/G-quartet interaction could have contributed to the specific assignment of proline on GGG and that this coding could have been the first in the genetic code.
References
Aboul-ela F, Murchie AIH, Lilley DMJ (1992) NMR study of parallel-stranded tetraplex formation by the hexadeoxynucleotide d(TG4T). Nature 360:280–282
Balagurumoorthy P, Brahmachari SK, Mohanty D, Bansal M, Sasisekharan V (1992) Hairpin and parallel quartet structures for telomeric sequences. Nucleic Acids Res 20:4061–4067
Bernhardt HS, Patrick WM (2014) Genetic code evolution started with the incorporation of glycine, followed by other small hydrophilic amino acids. J Mol Evol 78:307–309
Crick FHC (1968) The origin of the genetic code. J Mol Biol 38:367–379
Eigen M, Schuster P (1977) Hypercycle. A principle of natural self-organization. Part A: emergence of the hypercycle. Naturwissenschaften 64:541–565
Hardin CC, Henderson E, Watson T, Prosser JK (1991) Monovalent cation induced structural transitions in telomeric DNAs: G-DNA folding intermediates. Biochemistry 30:4460–4472
Jurka J, Smith TF (1987) β-turn-driven early evolution: the genetic code and biosynthetic pathways. J Mol Evol 25:15–19
Kim J, Cheong C, Moore PB (1991) Tetramerization of an RNA oligonucleotide containing a GGGG sequence. Nature 351:331–332
Lacey JC Jr, Mullins DW Jr (1983) Experimental studies related to the origin of the genetic code and the process of protein synthesis. Orig Life 13:3–42
Laughlan G, Murchie AI, Norman DG, Moore MH, Moody PC, Lilley DM, Luisi B (1994) The high-resolution crystal structure of a parallel-stranded guanine tetraplex. Science 265:520–524
Samuel D, Kumar TK, Ganesh G, Jayaraman G, Yang PW, Chang MM, Trivedi VD, Wang SL, Hwang KC, Chang DK, Yu C (2000) Proline inhibits aggregation during protein refolding. Protein Sci 9:344–352
Schimmel P (1996) Origin of genetic code: a needle in the haystack of tRNA sequences. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 93:4521–4522
Sen D, Gilbert W (1988) Formation of parallel four-stranded complexes by guanine-rich motifs in DNA and its implications for meiosis. Nature 334:364–366
Shimizu M (1982) Molecular basis for the genetic code. J Mol Evol 18:297–303
Umehara T, Kitagawa T, Nakazawa Y, Yoshino H, Nemoto R, Tamura K (2012) RNA tetraplex as a primordial peptide synthesis scaffold. BioSystems 109:145–150
Wilmot CM, Thornton JM (1988) Analysis and prediction of the different types of β-turn in proteins. J Mol Biol 203:221–232
Wong JT (1975) A co-evolution theory of the genetic code. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 72:1909–1912
Yarus M (1998) Amino acids as RNA ligands: a direct-RNA-template theory for the code’s origin. J Mol Evol 47:109–117
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by grants-in-aid for Scientific Research from the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture (MEXT), Japan (Grant No. 25291082 to K.T. and 24710231 to T.U.), and the programme for the development of strategic research centre in private universities by MEXT, Japan.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Komatsu, R., Sawada, R., Umehara, T. et al. Proline Might Have Been the First Amino Acid in the Primitive Genetic Code. J Mol Evol 78, 310–312 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00239-014-9629-9
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00239-014-9629-9