Oligomerization of a Bimolecular Ribozyme Modestly Rescues its Structural Defects that Disturb Interdomain Assembly to Form the Catalytic Site.

The emergence of cellular compartmentalization was a crucial step in the hypothetical RNA world and its evolution because it would not only prevent the extinction of RNA self-replication systems due to dispersion/diffusion of their components but also facilitate ribozyme reactions by molecular crowding effects. Here, we proposed and examined self-assembly of RNA components as a primitive cellular-like environment, which may have the ability to mimic cellular compartmentalization and crowding effects. We engineered a bimolecular group I ribozyme to form a one-dimensional (1D)-ribozyme assembly. In the 1D assembly form, severe mutations that inactivated the parent bimolecular ribozyme were modestly rescued resulting in weak catalytic ability.