Isaac Knudson

Jul 29, 2024 | biorxiv.org | Joshua Davisson |Evan Kalb |Isaac Knudson |Alanna Schepartz

AbstractLife as we know it depends on the homochirality of nucleic acids and proteins. However, there is no widely accepted explanation for why life uses only D-sugars for nucleic acids and L-amino acids for proteins. Here we demonstrate a prebiotically plausible method of nonenzymatic aminoacylation in a water ice-eutectic phase. These reactions produce high yields of aminoacyl-tRNAs, which are active in translation.

Jul 14, 2023 | biorxiv.org | Riley Fricke |Alanna Schepartz |Isaac Knudson

Confirmatory Results doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.07.14.549096 AbstractAminoacyl-tRNA synthetases (aaRSs) provide the functional and essential link between the sequence of an mRNA and the protein it encodes. aaRS enzymes catalyze a two-step chemical reaction that acylates specific tRNAs with a cognate α-amino acid.