Michael Yarus Examples

Discovery of hydrolytic editing by AARS's

Documenting the first substantial thing I did in my own lab at CU, discovery of the ability of Aminoacyl RNA Synthetases (AARS) to correct aminoacylation mistakes (simultaneous with Eldred & Schimmel, JBC 247: 2961(1972)

tRNA accommodation

A review of tRNA coding on the ribosome, 1995 - introduces tRNA tuning and distortion during coding ( the 'Waggle theory'). Appears to have captured essential aspects of coding long before the molecules could be visualized - see: Schmeing, ..., Ramakrishnan, Science 326: 688 (2009) and Targanski, Cherkasova, RNA 14: 1095 (2008) and Ledoux S, Olejniczak M, Uhlenbeck OC. Nat Struct Mol Biol. 16:359-364 (2009).

Translational activities in RNA alone

Cold Spring Harbor Symposium talk, 2001

Sample Chapter from 'Ancestor'

Chapter 8 from "Life from an RNA world: The ancestor within", by M. Yarus, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, April, 2010

The stereochemical genetic code, 2005

Article from Annual Reviews of Biochemistry, 2005

The stereochemical genetic code, 2009

Review article from Journal of Molecular Evolution

Origin of life

2010 Cold Spring Harbor Press Perspective on the Initial Darwinian Ancestor (IDA); that is, on the Origin of Life

Frequency of motifs - Scope of Selection

Beginnings of a long search for a method that computes the frequency of structures in randomized RNA sequences - this computation is the key to calculating of how much RNA you must have to begin seeing active molecules. For the latest on this threshold to the RNA world, see Kennedy et al (2008) Frontiers in Bioscience 13: 6060-6071.

Latest publication on the 5-nucleotide ribozyme, GUGGC

Catalyzed and Spontaneous Reactions on Ribozyme Ribose - Extensive enzymatic product network with 20 compounds including aminoacyl-RNA, bisaminoacylated and bis peptidylated RNAs, bi bi ordered two-substrate kinetics, Km's, kcat, and more. In press at the Journal of the American Chemical Society (March, 2011)

Interpretation of the 5 nt ribozyme, GUGGC

For publication in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Series B, in 2011. A review of the data and particularly, an emphasis on the biological implications of the tiny ribozyme that makes aminoacyl-RNAs.

Small aminoacyl transfer centers at GU within a larger RNA

One of the consequences of the 5-nt ribozyme - there are potential active sites everywhere. Here is a preprint of the RNA Biology ms, 2012

RNA journal 20th anniversary article

Fully referenced note celebrating 20 years of the RNA Society's publication.