De Novo Putative Protein Domains from Random Peptides.

Citation: Ling, MHT. 2019. De Novo Putative Protein Domains from Random Peptides. Acta Scientific Microbiology 2(4): 109-112.

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How prebiotic chemistry in the primordial world becomes biochemistry, is a major question in evolutionary biology. Studies have found that biological activities from random DNA sequences are not rare and abiotically-catalyzed polymerization of 13 amino acid chains can occur. However, it is not clear whether random chains 13 amino acid or longer are biologically functional. In this study, random peptide sequences were generated and mapped to ProSite motifs and NCBI Conserved Domains Database. Results suggest that a large fraction of randomly generated 13 amino acid chains may contain putative protein domains while longer random peptide chains may contain functional protein domains. Large diversity of protein domains is observed. Hence, it is plausible for putative functions to originate from abiotically-catalyzed 13 amino acid chains. As both self-replicating RNA molecules and prion proteins have been found, it is plausible that both RNA and peptides may co-exist and synergize in the primordial world.