Tracing ancient mRNA hairpins.

From recent developments of the early evolution theory it follows that the earliest mRNAs were short ( approximately 20 nt) (G+C)-rich polynucleotides. These short sequences could form hairpins, which would be of high evolutionary advantage because of stability and uniqueness of their conformations. Due to mutations accumulated during billions of years of evolution, the speculated earliest hairpins would largely lose the initial complementarities. Some of the original complementary base-to-base contacts, however, may have survived. Computational analysis of modern prokaryotic mRNA sequences reveals excess population of the expected short range complementarities. The derived earliest mRNA hairpin size fully corresponds to the predicted size of ancient coding duplexes. The repertoire of the surviving hairpins traced in modern mRNA confirms duplex structure of the earliest mRNA, suggested by the early molecular evolution theory.