DNA-Peptide Interactions Create Complex Behaviours Which May Have Shaped Biology
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
DNA-protein interactions are extremely important in biology. For example, each human cell contains about 2 meters of DNA, but this is packaged into a space about 1 million times smaller. The information in this DNA allows the cell to copy itself. This extreme packaging is mainly accomplished in cells by wrapping the DNA around proteins. Thus, how DNA and proteins interact is of extreme interest to scientists trying to understand how biology organizes itself. New research by scientists at the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) at Tokyo Institute of Technology and the Institut Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, ESPCI Paris, Universite PSL suggests that the interactions of DNA and proteins have deep-seated propensities to form higher-ordered structures such as those that allow the extreme packaging of DNA in cells.
[...] In their work, Fraccia and Jia showed that double-stranded DNA and peptides can generate many different (Liquid Crystal) phases in a peculiar way: The LCs actually form in membraneless droplets called coacervates, where DNA and peptides are spontaneously co-assembled and ordered. This process brings DNA and peptides to very high concentrations comparable to that of a cell's nucleus, which is 100 to 1000 times greater than that of the diluted initial solution (which is the maximum concentration that can likely be achieved on early Earth). Thus, such spontaneous behavior can, in principle, favor the formation of the first cell-like structures on early Earth, which would take advantage of the ordered but fluid LC matrix in order to gain stability and functionality and to favor the growth and the evolution of primitive biomolecules.
[...] This new understanding of biopolymeric self-organization may also be important for understanding how life self-organized to become living in the first place. Understanding how primitive collections of molecules could have structured themselves into collectively behaving aggregates is a significant avenue of future research.
More information: Tommaso P. Fraccia et al, Liquid Crystal Coacervates Composed of Short Double-Stranded DNA and Cationic Peptides, ACS Nano (2020). DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.0c05083
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.