The Brno team has developed a theoretical chemical model on the basis of their Italian colleagues’ experiments, showing how the simplest genetic molecules could combine to form more complex ones paving the way to chemical evolution. The work thus provides an insight into the function of the most ancient genetic molecules.
The experimental work was carried out in Rome in the laboratory of Prof. Ernesto Di Mauro and Dr. Samanta Pino. The theoretical modelling took place on the computers of Brno’s CEITEC in the laboratory of Prof. Jiří Šponer under the leadership of Dr. Judit E Šponer in the frame of a project focussing on studies related to the origin of life. The published work is part of the wider research of the Brno team and cooperating laboratories, aimed at the development of a complete chemical model reconstructing the emergence of the first genetic molecules from formamide, which is a simple organic molecule.
This work is also in closely related to another study, published last December in PNAS, proposing that asteroid impacts could contribute to the beginnings of life on Earth. Scientists from Prague’s J. Heyrovský Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republicand the joint workplace of Brno’s Biophysical Institute of the AS CRand the Central European Institute of Technology (CEITEC) simulated the energy released by the impact of an extraterrestrial body with the aid of pulsed laser beams at the Prague Asterix Laser System (PALS). In the process they detected simultaneous formation of adenine, guanine, cytosine and uracil, i.e. the four basic components of the genetic material ribonucleic acid, which is generally considered to be the predecessor of DNA.
