Pre-biotic evolution

A new dimension in the development of nucleic acid based catalysts was introduced by Breaker and Joyce in 1994 when they isolated the first deoxyribozyme [111]. It is not unexpected that DNA is also able to catalyze chemical reactions because it was shown previously that ssDNA aptamers which bind to a variety of ligands can be isolated by in vitro selection [141]. In the meantime, several deoxyribozymes have been described which expand the range of chemical transformations accelerated by nucleic acid catalysts even further and raising question whether even catalytic DNA might have played some role in the pre-biotic evolution of hfe on earth [69-71]. 

---