Study Shows How the Right Mixture of Salt Might have Helped Kickstart Life in Earth

The hereditary substance DNA encodes the instructions for protein synthesis in contemporary organisms, which are the flexible nanomachines that allow modern cells to operate and multiply.

But how did this functional connection between DNA and proteins come about? Primitive biological systems, according to the "RNA world" concept, were made up of self-replicating RNA molecules.

Magnesium ions accumulate in significantly higher local concentrations than sodium ions due to the combination of convection and thermophoresis. In addition, the degree of this concentration effect grows in proportion to the size of the system.

Using catalytic RNA strands given by Hannes Mutschler (MPI for Biochemistry/TU Dortmund) as a benchmark system, the team was able to show that RNA strand ligation and ribozyme self-replication are more effective under thermophoretic circumstances. Furthermore, the new research shows that the presence of heat flows allows RNA activity to occur even when the medium contains a large sodium-to-magnesium ion ratio (1000:1), i.e., under conditions assumed in some prebiotic scenarios are otherwise incompatible with RNA-based catalytic processes.

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