Evolution of early mechanisms of translation of genetic information into polypeptides.

In devising models of the origin of life it is necessary to tackle the problems that the processes of genetic information transfer that are central to life depend on molecules that are themselves the products of such processes--enzymes. A proposed model must eventually yield a detailed chain of processes that can be checked experimentally. We have developed a model in which interactions between the helices of hairpin-loop 'adaptor' RNA molecules (amino acid carrying), lined up side-by-side by sequence complementarity to another 'messenger' RNA, promotes polypeptide synthesis.