The RNA World: History of an Idea, an Idea of History

The RNA World: History of an idea, an idea of history

TIMELINE

Until the 1800s

People have always speculated about the origins of life. Every culture has its creation myths, usually centered around where human beings came from. From the time of Aristotle onwards, educated folk believed that life arose more or less spontaneously from non-living material: mud could give rise to fish, a dirty shirt could breed mice, and manure could create flies. Though there was doubt as early as the 1600s, this theory of spontaneous generation persisted.

1864

Louis Pasteur disproves spontaneous generation by showing that, when liquids are boiled to kill any microorganisms already in them and are kept sterile, nothing grows in them.

1924

Alexander Ivanovich Oparin proposes that simple one-celled life forms might have come from simple organic molecules present in the early earth's atmosphere. From geological evidence, he proposed theoretical conditions for the early earth:

The early atmosphere was quite different from the modern atmosphere and probably resembled atmospheres of other planets.

In the early atmosphere :

Hydrogen
Ammonia
Methane
Carbon Dioxide
Water
and Nitrogen

abounded; there was no free oxygen gas.

1929

English biochemist J.B.S. Haldane proposes that life might have arisen on earth when Oparin's early atmosphere was subjected to energy in the forms of:

Heat from the cooling earth
and
Ultraviolet radiation - screened out today by ozone (O3) in the atmosphere

1953

Stanley Miller (2) mixed gasses from the "primitive atmosphere" in a glass reaction vessel and subjected them to electric current for one week; the resulting compounds produced included amino acids.

James D. Watson and Francis Crick publish their findings on the structure of DNA

1961

Marshall Nirenberg and his colleagues begin their five-year project of cracking the genetic code by discovering that a messenger RNA made up entirely of the base uracil can be translated into the amino acid phenylalanine.

1962

Watson and Crick share a Nobel Prize for their work on DNA structure.

1968

Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel propose that the first information molecule was RNA.

1972

Harry Noller proposes a role for ribosomal RNA in the translation of messenger RNA into protein.

1986

Walter Gilbert coins the term "RNA World" to describe a time during which RNA was the primary information and catalytic molecule.

Thomas Cech publishes his discovery of self-splicing (catalytic) RNA, some of the first solid evidence for the RNA World.

Kary Mullis presents the Polymerase Chain Reaction, a procedure that allows rapid copying of DNA and RNA sequences.

1989

Thomas Cech and Sidney Altman share a Nobel Prize for discovering catalytic RNA.

Gerald Joyce begins experiments simulating RNA evolution using Polymerase Chain Reaction.

Jack Szostak's lab presents evidence for self-replicating RNA.

1992

Harry Noller's lab presents evidence for ribosomal RNA involvement in protein synthesis.

1993

Kary Mullis gets a Nobel Prize for Polymerase Chain Reaction.

Gerald Joyce develops test-tube RNA evolution experimental procedures.

1994

While working in Szostak's lab, Charles Wilson creates RNA molecules that can carry out a simple cellular reaction better than the protein that usually carries it out in cells.


RNA and DNA	Cells	Origins	SciWriting