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SUMMARY:Liquid crystal ordering of RNA: a route for the origin of life?
DTSTART:20170207T110000
DTSTAMP:20260916T201417Z
UID:2891e0f6bb493ce793bc3fa6cfd3fd324bd0b50f6e4251bd76e1775c
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Prof. Tommaso Bellini\, University of Milan\nBIOLOGICAL & STAT
 ISTICAL PHYSICS SEMINAR\n\nWe recently discovered that concentrated soluti
 ons of short oligonucleotides (down to 4 base long) and even solutions of 
 single bases spontaneously develop liquid crystal ordering. In such supram
 olecular assemblies\, duplex-forming oligomers and paired bases are held i
 n continuous mutual contact to form chemically discontinuous but physicall
 y continuous double helices. We found that this spontaneous order can serv
 e as a mechanism for molecular selection and as a template to guide abioti
 c ligation of the oligomers in long chains.\n\nSpecifically\, we studied t
 he influence of liquid crystal ordering on the efficiency of non-enzymatic
  ligation reaction induced by water-soluble carbodiimide EDC as condensing
  agent. We find that the liquid crystal ordering markedly enhances the lig
 ation efficacy\, thus suggesting such spontaneous ordering may have been t
 he key feature in the emerging of nucleic acids from the primordial molecu
 lar noise.\n\nWas the RNA World prepared by an even more ancient “Liquid
  Crystal World”?\n 
LOCATION:BSP 727 https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==BSP%20727
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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