Researchers from The Scripps Research Institute have developed an enzyme with unique characteristics that might be the key to the origin of life on Earth.

Aside from shedding light on one possible route in which life began, the achievement could also prove useful as a tool for evolving new and possibly useful molecules.

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"When I start to tell people about this, they sometimes wonder if we're merely suggesting the possibility of such an enzyme-but no, we actually made it," said Gerald Joyce, professor in TSRI's Departments of Chemistry and Cell and Molecular Biology and director of the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation.

The novel enzyme has been named a "ribozyme" since it consists of ribonucleic acid. Advanced DNA-based life forms seem to have evolved from the more basic "RNA world," according to the team,

Several scientists suspect the molecules of RNA with properties akin to enzymes were the first self-replicators.

The newly synthesized ribozyme essentially functions in a similar manner. Using an original strand of RNA as a "template" or reference, the ribozyme helps create a "copy" strand of RNA.

It doesn't, however, make an identical molecular copy of itself. Instead, it makes a copy of a mirror image of itself, similar to the mirroring between a person's set of hands.

The mirror image will then create a mirror image of itself, which will be identical to the original.

The "cross-chiral" enzymes haven't been made before. The arrival of these enzymes in a primordial world of RNA, which the new study demonstrates to be possible, could have overcome a significant problem in the theory of the origin of life.

TagsEnzyme, origin of life, life, Biology, Ribozyme, RNA, Ribonucleic acid