时间：11月15日星期二9:00-10:30

Time：9:00-10:30 AM，Tues., Nov. 15th，2022

主持人：西湖大学生命科学学院特聘研究员 万蕊雪

    Host：Dr. Ruixue Wan, PI of School of Life Sciences

主讲嘉宾/Speaker:

Dr. Lijun Zhou, Assistant Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics , University of Pennsylvania　　

Dr. Zhou obtained her PhD from Tsinghua University. In 2014, she joined Dr. Jack W. Szostak’s lab to study more knowledge about RNA. And now she has been engaged as Assistant professor in Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Moreover, she has published theses in Nucleic Acids Res.(2022), J. Am. Chem.Soc. (2020, 2021), RNA(2021) and eLife (2019).

讲座摘要/Abstract:

The non-enzymatic replication of the primordial genetic material is thought to have enabled the evolution of the first ribozymes, leading to early forms of RNA-based life. However, the replication of oligonucleotides long enough to encode catalytic functions is problematic in many aspects, including the low efficiency of template copying and the strand inhibition problem. Harnessing non-natural nucleic acid and artificial cells, we explore how the RNA world might have begun. The rate of non-enzymatic polymerization and ligation can be greatly enhanced by employing 3ʹ-amino-2ʹ,3ʹ-dideoxynucleotides. This modification enables us to observe the rapid chemical copying of long RNA templates by the multi-step ligation, as well as the formation of long oligonucleotides inside model protocells starting from tetramer building blocks, suggesting a potential route to the assembly of artificial cells capable of evolution. Further, we show that a functional ligase ribozyme can be assembled, with specific and prebiotically plausible of splinted templates designs that avoid the strong strand inhibition of the ribozyme activity. Our work demonstrates a transition from non-enzymatic ligation to enzymatic ligation, which is a key step from the ‘pre-RNA world’ to the ‘RNA world’.

联系人/Contact：

生命科学学院

于文越 yuwenyue@westlake.edu.cn