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RNA World
The RNA world is a hypothetical stage in the evolutionary history of life on Earth, in which self-replicating RNA molecules proliferated before the evolution of DNA and proteins. The term also refers to the hypothesis that posits the existence of this stage. Alexander Rich first proposed the concept of the RNA world in 1962, and Walter Gilbert coined the term in 1986. Alternative chemical paths to life have been proposed, and RNA-based life may not have been the first life to exist. Even so, the evidence for an RNA world is strong enough that the hypothesis has gained wide acceptance. The concurrent formation of all four RNA building blocks further strengthened the hypothesis. Regardless of its plausibility in a prebiotic scenario, the RNA world can serve as a model system for studying the origin of life. Like DNA, RNA can store and replicate genetic information; like protein enzymes, RNA enzymes (ribozymes) can catalyze (start or accelerate) chemical reactions that are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Difference DNA RNA-EN
Difference, The Difference, Differences or Differently may refer to: Music * ''Difference'' (album), by Dreamtale, 2005 * ''Differently'' (album), by Cassie Davis, 2009 ** "Differently" (song), by Cassie Davis, 2009 * ''The Difference'' (album), Pendleton, 2008 * "The Difference" (The Wallflowers song), 1997 * "The Difference", a song by Westlife from the 2009 album '' Where We Are'' * "The Difference", a song by Nick Jonas from the 2016 album '' Last Year Was Complicated'' * "The Difference", a song by Meek Mill featuring Quavo, from the 2016 mixtape '' DC4'' * "The Difference", a song by Matchbox Twenty from the 2002 album '' More Than You Think You Are'' * "The Difference", a 2020 song by Flume A flume is a human-made channel for water, in the form of an open declined gravity chute whose walls are raised above the surrounding terrain, in contrast to a trench or ditch. Flumes are not to be confused with aqueducts, which are built to ... featuring Toro y Moi * "The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Coenzyme F420
Coenzyme F420 or 8-hydroxy-5-deazaflavin is a coenzyme (sometimes called a cofactor) involved in redox reactions in methanogens, in many Actinomycetota, and sporadically in other bacterial lineages. It is a flavin derivative. The coenzyme is a substrate for coenzyme F420 hydrogenase, 5,10-methylenetetrahydromethanopterin reductase and methylenetetrahydromethanopterin dehydrogenase. A particularly rich natural source of F420 is ''Mycobacterium smegmatis'', in which several dozen enzymes use F420 instead of the related cofactor FMN used by homologous enzymes in most other species. Eukaryotes including the fruit fly ''Drosophila melanogaster'' and the algae '' Ostreococcus tauri'' also use a precursor to this cofactor. Biosynthesis Coenzyme F420 is synthesized via a multi-step pathway: * 7,8-didemethyl-8-hydroxy-5-deazariboflavin synthase produces Coenzyme FO (also written F0), itself a cofactor of DNA photolyase (antenna). This is the head portion of the molecule. * 2-pho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nature (journal)
''Nature'' is a British weekly scientific journal founded and based in London, England. As a multidisciplinary publication, ''Nature'' features peer-reviewed research from a variety of academic disciplines, mainly in science and technology. It has core editorial offices across the United States, continental Europe, and Asia under the international scientific publishing company Springer Nature. ''Nature'' was one of the world's most cited scientific journals by the Science Edition of the 2019 '' Journal Citation Reports'' (with an ascribed impact factor of 42.778), making it one of the world's most-read and most prestigious academic journals. , it claimed an online readership of about three million unique readers per month. Founded in autumn 1869, ''Nature'' was first circulated by Norman Lockyer and Alexander Macmillan as a public forum for scientific innovations. The mid-20th century facilitated an editorial expansion for the journal; ''Nature'' redoubled its efforts in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hans Kuhn (chemist)
Hans Kuhn (5 December 1919 – 25 November 2012) was a Swiss chemist. He was professor emeritus for physical chemistry and former scientific director at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry (Karl Friedrich Bonhoeffer Institute) in Göttingen. Biography Curriculum Hans Kuhn was born in Bern, Switzerland. He studied chemistry at the ETH Zürich and worked for his doctorate at University of Basel under the guidance of Werner Kuhn (not related). He received his habilitation in 1946. From 1946 until 1947 he worked as a post doctoral fellow with Linus Pauling at Caltech in Pasadena and in 1950 with Niels Bohr in Copenhagen. In 1951, he became professor at the University of Basel. He was appointed in 1953 as professor and director of the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Philipps University of Marburg where he stayed until 1970. Then he was at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry (Karl Friedrich Bonhoeffer Institute) in Göttingen as director of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carl Woese
Carl Richard Woese (; July 15, 1928 – December 30, 2012) was an American microbiologist and biophysicist. Woese is famous for defining the Archaea (a new domain of life) in 1977 through a pioneering phylogenetic taxonomy of 16S ribosomal RNA, a technique that has revolutionized microbiology. He also originated the RNA world hypothesis in 1967, although not by that name. Woese held the Stanley O. Ikenberry Chair and was professor of microbiology at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. Life and education Carl Woese was born in Syracuse, New York on July 15, 1928. Woese attended Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts. He received a bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics from Amherst College in 1950. During his time at Amherst, Woese took only one biology course (Biochemistry, in his senior year) and had "no scientific interest in plants and animals" until advised by William M. Fairbank, then an assistant professor of physics at Amherst, to pursue biophysics at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leslie Orgel
Leslie Eleazer Orgel FRS (12 January 1927 – 27 October 2007) was a British chemist. He is known for his theories on the origin of life. Biography Leslie Orgel was born in London, England, on . He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in chemistry with first-class honours from the University of Oxford in 1948. In 1951 he was elected a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford and in 1953 was awarded his PhD in chemistry. Orgel started his career as a theoretical inorganic chemist and continued his studies in this field at Oxford, the California Institute of Technology and the University of Chicago. Together with Sydney Brenner, Jack Dunitz, Dorothy Hodgkin, and Beryl M. Oughton he was one of the first people in April 1953 to see the model of the structure of DNA, constructed by Francis Crick and James Watson, at the time he and the other scientists were working at Oxford University's Chemistry Department. According to the late Dr. Beryl Oughton, later Rimmer, they all travelled to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Francis Crick
Francis Harry Compton Crick (8 June 1916 – 28 July 2004) was an English molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist. He, James Watson, Rosalind Franklin, and Maurice Wilkins played crucial roles in deciphering the helical structure of the DNA molecule. Crick and Watson's paper in ''Nature'' in 1953 laid the groundwork for understanding DNA structure and functions. Together with Maurice Wilkins, they were jointly awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material". Crick was an important theoretical molecular biologist and played a crucial role in research related to revealing the helical structure of DNA. He is widely known for the use of the term "central dogma" to summarise the idea that once information is transferred from nucleic acids (DNA or RNA) to proteins, it cannot flow back to nucleic acids. In other words ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Albert Szent-Györgyi
Albert Imre Szent-Györgyi de Nagyrápolt ( hu, nagyrápolti Szent-Györgyi Albert Imre; September 16, 1893 – October 22, 1986) was a Hungarian biochemist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1937. He is credited with first isolating vitamin C and discovering the components and reactions of the citric acid cycle. He was also active in the Hungarian Resistance during World War II, and entered Hungarian politics after the war. Early life Szent-Györgyi was born in Budapest, Kingdom of Hungary in 1893. His father, Miklós Szent-Györgyi, was a landowner, born in Marosvásárhely, Transylvania (today Târgu Mureş, Romania), a Calvinist, and could trace his ancestry back to 1608 when Sámuel, a Calvinist predicant, was ennobled. At the time of Szent-Györgyi's birth, being of the nobility was considered important and created opportunities that otherwise were not available. (Miklós Szent-Györgyi's parents were Imre Szent-Györgyi and Mária Csiky). ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Abiogenesis
In biology, abiogenesis (from a- 'not' + Greek bios 'life' + genesis 'origin') or the origin of life is the natural process by which life has arisen from non-living matter, such as simple organic compounds. The prevailing scientific hypothesis is that the transition from non-living to living entities on Earth was not a single event, but an evolutionary process of increasing complexity that involved the formation of a habitable planet, the prebiotic synthesis of organic molecules, molecular self-replication, self-assembly, autocatalysis, and the emergence of cell membranes. Many proposals have been made for different stages of the process. The study of abiogenesis aims to determine how pre-life chemical reactions gave rise to life under conditions strikingly different from those on Earth today. It primarily uses tools from biology and chemistry, with more recent approaches attempting a synthesis of many sciences. Life functions through the specialized chemistry of carbon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monomers
In chemistry, a monomer ( ; ''mono-'', "one" + '' -mer'', "part") is a molecule that can react together with other monomer molecules to form a larger polymer chain or three-dimensional network in a process called polymerization. Classification Monomers can be classified in many ways. They can be subdivided into two broad classes, depending on the kind of the polymer that they form. Monomers that participate in condensation polymerization have a different stoichiometry than monomers that participate in addition polymerization: : Other classifications include: *natural vs synthetic monomers, e.g. glycine vs caprolactam, respectively *polar vs nonpolar monomers, e.g. vinyl acetate vs ethylene, respectively *cyclic vs linear, e.g. ethylene oxide vs ethylene glycol, respectively The polymerization of one kind of monomer gives a homopolymer. Many polymers are copolymers, meaning that they are derived from two different monomers. In the case of condensation polymerizations, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Biocatalysis
Biocatalysis refers to the use of living (biological) systems or their parts to speed up ( catalyze) chemical reactions. In biocatalytic processes, natural catalysts, such as enzymes, perform chemical transformations on organic compounds. Both enzymes that have been more or less isolated and enzymes still residing inside living cells are employed for this task. Modern biotechnology, specifically directed evolution, has made the production of modified or non-natural enzymes possible. This has enabled the development of enzymes that can catalyze novel small molecule transformations that may be difficult or impossible using classical synthetic organic chemistry. Utilizing natural or modified enzymes to perform organic synthesis is termed chemoenzymatic synthesis; the reactions performed by the enzyme are classified as chemoenzymatic reactions. History Biocatalysis underpins some of the oldest chemical transformations known to humans, for brewing predates recorded history. The old ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Information Storage
Data storage is the recording (storing) of information (data) in a storage medium. Handwriting, phonographic recording, magnetic tape, and optical discs are all examples of storage media. Biological molecules such as RNA and DNA are considered by some as data storage. Recording may be accomplished with virtually any form of energy. Electronic data storage requires electrical power to store and retrieve data. Data storage in a digital, machine-readable medium is sometimes called ''digital data''. Computer data storage is one of the core functions of a general-purpose computer. Electronic documents can be stored in much less space than paper documents. Barcodes and magnetic ink character recognition (MICR) are two ways of recording machine-readable data on paper. Recording media A recording medium is a physical material that holds information. Newly created information is distributed and can be stored in four storage media–print, film, magnetic, and optical–and seen or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
