Publications by authors named "Avinash V Dass"
Article Synopsis
- - Templated ligation is an efficient method for replicating long RNA strands using a prebiotically available activation, specifically the 2',3'-cyclic phosphate, which forms during RNA breakdown.
- - Research shows that this ligation process can occur in simple conditions (low-salt, alkaline pH, and moderate temperatures) without needing additional catalysts, leading to a 50% increase in canonical linkages compared to past studies.
- - The reaction is sequence-specific with high fidelity rates, enabling the successful creation of longer RNA strands, which may indicate how ribozymes could have assembled on early Earth.
The exclusive presence of β-D-ribofuranose in nucleic acids is still a conundrum in prebiotic chemistry, given that pyranose species are substantially more stable at equilibrium. However, a precise characterisation of the relative furanose/pyranose fraction at temperatures higher than about 50 °C is still lacking. Here, we employ a combination of NMR measurements and statistical mechanics modelling to predict a population inversion between furanose and pyranose at equilibrium at high temperatures.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA concise outlook on the potential role of confinement in phosphorylation and phosphate condensation pertaining to prebiotic chemistry is presented. Inorganic confinement is a relatively uncharted domain in studies concerning prebiotic chemistry, and even more so in terms of experimentation. However, molecular crowding within confined dimensions is central to the functioning of contemporary biology.
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