Re: RNA mutation repair

["Bjorn Cedervall" <bcradsafers@hotmail.com>]

Andrew,

There is a chapter about the probability of spontaneous self-replicating 
molecules in a volume on artificial intelligence that was published about 
8-9 years ago (parts of the book seemed more "artificial" than 
"intelligence"). RNA was used as a model - I think you may like that 
reading. Unfortunately I leant the book to someone else so I cannot give you 
the exact reference immediately (bought it at the ICRR meeting in Toronto in 
1991 - possibly Academic Press). The bottom line of the story was that it 
didn't seem strange at all that self replicating molecules arise. It was 
about the early evolution and selection of such molecules. I hope I can come 
back with an exact reference.
I think that there are interesting aspects about translating repair fidelity 
and/or efficiency and such aspects to todays repair systems. On one hand, as 
you wrote interestingly about in SSI news (No. 1, 1999 - very interesting 
about the exploding supernovas - keep on investigating that!), the 
background radiation was much higher some 3 billion years ago, on the other 
hand the biological selection pressure mechanisms were probably very 
different. For each environment - organisms go through an evolution of 
evolvability for a balanced population need for incoming mutations 
(individuals are sacrified).
The evolution of sexes for complex genomes (not for having fun - but rather 
for recombinational "backup" repair (either homologous chromosomes or 
chromatids (G2) and gene shuffling and rearrangement etc) is part of the 
challenge to understand. Please comment or criticize.

Bjorn Cedervall
bcradsafers@hotmail.com
Stockholm, Sweden
http://www.geocities.com/WallStreet/Exchange/8256/

>I am trying to learn about mutation repair in RNA and RNA-based >organisms.

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