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Origins of biological information and the genetic code

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Summary

Amino acids have been shown to be thermally condensable to informational proteinoids, as expressed in a variety of enzymic functions. Such proteinoids easily yield vast numbers of minimal cells having many properties of contemporary cells including reproduction, which requires, however, growth by accretion. Experiments have demonstrated how internucleotide bonds are synthesized by such minimal cells, and how appropriate complexes of proteinoids with polynucleotides synthesize peptides.

Since the necessary conditions for these processes occur geologically, a theory of the origin of a reproductive protocell and partial further evolution thereof has resulted. The origin and early evolution of information has been traced in this paper as a consequence of the capacity for selective interactions by the macromolecules and systems produced in the primordial sequence. While this picture, like any evolutionary picture, can be extended by further studies, it is an unbroken continuality (see reference 72) for the sequence of processes covered. The expression of biological information has come to be visualized as a complex interplay of enzymic catalysis, stabilization in cells and organelles, and coding between two types of macromolecule. The new view is that only limited kinds of informational mechanisms could have emerged from their precursor mechanisms. The task for the scientist studying the origin of information is one partly of identifying the essential sequence.

The experiments indicate that prior to organismsmolecular selection charted the path of informational evolution. With the advent of reproducing organisms,Darwinian selection entered the evolutionary stream, but molecular selection continued to operate also. At some stage, molecular selection rooted in amino acid interaction became coded in purine, pyrimidine-amino acid interaction within polymers.

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  1. Institute for Molecular and Cellular Evolution, University of Miami, 33134, Coral Gables, FL, USA

    Sidney W. Fox

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Fox, S.W. Origins of biological information and the genetic code. Mol Cell Biochem 3, 129–142 (1974). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01659185

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