RNA based evolutionary optimization

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Abstract
The notion of an RNA world has been introduced for a prebiotic scenario that is dominated by RNA molecules and their properties, in particular their capabilities to act as templates for reproduction and as catalysts for several cleavage and ligation reactions of polynucleotides and polypeptides. This notion is used here also for simple experimental assays which are well suited to study evolution in the test tube. In molecular evolution experiments fitness is determined in essence by the molecular structures of RNA molecules. Evidence is presented for adaptation to environment in cell-free media. RNA based molecular evolution experiments have led to interesting spin-offs in biotechnology, commonly called ‘applied molecular evolution’, which make use of Darwinian trial-and-error strategies in order to synthesize new pharmacological compounds and other advanced materials on a biological basis. Error-propagation in RNA replication leads to formation of mutant spectra called ‘quasispecies’. An increase in the error rate broadens the mutant spectrum. There exists a sharply defined threshold beyond which heredity breaks down and evolutionary adaptation becomes impossible. Almost all RNA viruses studied so far operate at conditions close to this error threshold. Quasispecies and error thresholds are important for an understanding of RNA virus evolution, and they may help to develop novel antiviral strategies. Evolution of RNA molecules can be studied and interpreted by considering secondary structures. The notion of sequence space introduces a distance between pairs of RNA sequences which is tantamount to counting the minimal number of point mutations required to convert the sequences into each other. The mean sensitivity of RNA secondary structures to mutation depends strongly on the base pairing alphabet: structures from sequences which contain only one base pair (GC or AU are much less stable against mutation than those derived from the natural (AUGC) sequences. Evolutionary optimization of two-letter sequences in thus more difficult than optimization in the world of natural RNA sequences with four bases. This fact might explain the usage of four bases in the genetic language of nature. Finally we study the mapping from RNA sequences into secondary structures and explore the topology of RNA shape space. We find that ‘neutral paths’ connecting neighbouring sequences with identical structures go very frequently through entire sequence space. Sequences folding into common structures are found everywhere in sequence space. Hence, evolution can migrate to almost every part of sequence space without ‘hill climbing’ and only small fractions of the entire number of sequences have to be searched in order to find suitable structures.