Abstract
AbstractThe origin of biological information is an unexplained phenomenon. Prior research in resolving the origin of proteins, based on the assumption that the first genes were contiguous prokaryotic sequences has not succeeded. Rather, it has been established that contiguous protein-coding genes do not exist in practically any amount of random genetic sequences. We found that complex eukaryotic proteins could be inherently encoded in split genes that could exist by chance within mere micrograms to milligrams of random DNA. Using protein amino acid sequence variability, codon degeneracy, and stringent exon-length restriction, we demonstrate that split genes for proteins of extant eukaryotes occur extensively in random genetic sequences. The results provide evidence that an abundance of split genes encoding advanced proteins in a small amount of prebiotic genetic material could have ignited the evolution of the eukaryotic genome.
Highlights
While the origin of genes and proteins is still unknown, it has been traditionally assumed that a genome containing primitive, intronless, contiguous genes coding for simple proteins arose pre-biotically in a bacterial-like life form
Our findings demonstrate that complete split genes encoding complex proteins could have arisen within a minute amount of pre-biotic random DNA, explaining the origin of biological information and serving as the basis for the evolution of the very first genome
We have shown that biological information could have existed in split genes in random sequence, and that these genes could have been used in the self-assembly process to create countless eukaryotic genomes
Summary
While the origin of genes and proteins is still unknown, it has been traditionally assumed that a genome containing primitive, intronless, contiguous genes coding for simple proteins arose pre-biotically in a bacterial-like life form. Following its inception, this putative ancestor has been assumed to have evolved, in a tree-like linear branching pattern, into all of the complex genomes of the biota by random genetic mutation [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. Phylogenomic studies have demonstrated the presence of a eukaryote, rather than a prokaryote, at the base of the evolutionary tree [25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37]
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