Download Non-translational synthesis of poly-amino

The Common Arm digest: issue #4:
Non-translational synthesis of poly-amino-acids.
From:
J. molec. Evolution 2, 205--208 (1973)
... To invoke translation to produce [a simple repeat-sequence] … polypeptide seems
somewhat contrived in a primitive context. It would be preferable if they could be produced
in a simpler fashion--i.e., non-translationally.
Such a peptide is simple enough [in sequence] … that a non-translational synthesis by some
simple alternating process is definitely not ruled out. …
It is even possible that a biological process simpler than translation could produce such a
regular polypeptide. A number of years ago I suggested tRNA may have had its ancestry in
forms of nucleic acid that produced simple polypeptides by non-translational means
(Woese, 1963).
More recently I have proposed that the basic mechanism in translation is a two-fold
symmetric mechanism involving the tRNAs reading adjacent codons (Woese, 1970).
A simplified version of this latter sort of mechanism that does not involve mRNA,
but works by direct complementarity between "anticodon" sections of two
(complementary) tRNAs, is thereby suggested.
Such a mechanism would produce peptides whose sequences comprised two (or two
classes of) alternating amino acids (Woese, 1972).
Woese, C.: I.C.S.U. Rev. 5, 210 (t963).
What we are doing is turning the concept of the gene on its head.
The gene "product" came first, and the gene evolved to allow its
evolutionary elaboration – a matter of evolutionary refinement.