News: Life secret exposed - Scientists unlock mystery of molecular machine

Life secret exposed: Scientists unlock mystery of molecular machine
February 19th, 2009 in General Science / Chemistry


A major mystery about the origins of life has been resolved. According to a
study published in the journal Nature, two Université de Montréal scientists
have proposed a new theory for how a universal molecular machine, the
ribosome, managed to self-assemble as a critical step in the genesis of all
life on Earth.

"While the ribosome is a complex structure it features a clear hierarchy
that emerged based on basic chemical principles," says Sergey Steinberg, a
Université de Montréal biochemistry professor who made his discovery with
student Konstantin Bokov. "In the absence of such explanations, some people
could imagine unseen forces at work when such complex structures emerge in
nature."

What is a ribosome?

The ribosome is an enormous molecule responsible for translating the
messages carried in the genetic code of all organisms into the workhorse
molecules of the cell - proteins - that carry out all functions, including
replicating the genome itself. As the world celebrates the bicentennial
anniversary of the Father of Evolution, Charles Darwin, Prof. Steinberg's
theory brings the scientific community even deeper into the study of the
origins of life.

By examining the molecular self-organizing processes that preceded the
living cell, the point where time begins for biologists, Prof. Steinberg
goes further than Darwin and the many evolutionary biologists who followed
could have imagined

By the standards of biological molecules, ribosomes are immense. Though
visible only through lenses of the most powerful microscopes, comparing most
other biological molecules to this behemoth is like comparing a tricycle to
a jumbo jet. Having spent years gazing at the detailed structure of the
ribosome, Prof. Steinberg pondered how such an immense and complex structure
could have assembled itself from smaller building blocks that existed on the
early Earth.

From the simple to the complex

The key breakthrough came when he realized that the ribosome is organized by
a set of simple structural rules and that it had to be assembled from basic
building blocks in a very specific order; otherwise it would have fallen
apart. He then showed with mathematical rigor that the construction of the
ribosome likely followed an ordered series of steps to form the structure
found in the first living cell. To this day, that structure exists almost
unchanged in our own cells.

Chemists have been able to observe many examples of self-organizing behavior
with simple molecules, yet explaining the complex self-assembly of
biomolecules had not been so obvious.

"Thanks to the research of Sergey Steinberg and Konstantin Bokov, scientists
now have a glimpse of one key event that emerged spontaneously out of the
primordial chemical soup of the early Earth," explains Stephen Michnick, a
Université de Montréal biochemistry professor and Canada Research Chair in
Integrative Genomics. "Perhaps in the near future we may look forward to
more discoveries that will take us beyond the world of Darwin into an
understanding of the basic chemical principles that drove the emergence of
life on our planet and perhaps beyond."

Source: University of Montreal
http://www.physorg.com/news154265940.html

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek


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