The Evolutionary and Clinical Implications of Building an Archaeal Ribosome from a transfer RNA Fragment Ribozyme In-Silico

Tandem repeats of non-coding, but occasionally coding chromosome sequences of one kilo-base-pair (kb) nucleotides (nts) or greater in deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and ribonucleic acid (RNA), are found in the genomes of organisms in all three kingdoms of life, oftentimes crossing over from one kingdom to another. Indeed, hyper- and/or hypomethylation of these tandem repeat sequences has been associated with several human disease states, including cancer, schizophrenia, Facioscapulohumeral Muscular Dystrophy (FSHD), and Immunodeficiency, Centromeric Instability, and facial anomalies (ICF).

Since transfer RNA (tRNA) is becoming more widely accepted as the first genetic material, evolving from a ribozyme, with ribosomal RNA (rRNA) in turn evolving from it, an in-silico study was performed using prokaryotic genomic tRNA to assess whether or not tandem repeats of archaeal tRNA fragment ribozyme polymers could serve as viable 16S, 23S, and 5S subunits of ribosomes. The results not only indicate that they can, but that only one tRNA fragment ribozyme type is needed to do so. The evolutionary implications of this, as well as the clinical use of a widely used nt methylator were then evaluated, with the results and conclusions also reported herein.