Japanese scientists find archaean genes

TOKYO, Feb. 4 (UPI) -- Japanese scientists say they have made the world's first discovery of genes, in jigsaw-like pieces, taken from an archaean living in a hot spring.

The Keio University researchers led by Professor Akio Kanai said their findings are expected to lead to an explanation of the origin and evolution of genes since archaeans, unicellular organisms, are one of the earliest forms of life on Earth.

The researchers said they discovered combinations of 3 individual RNAs produced from separate genes can generate transfer RNA that are essential for decoding the genomic information during protein biosynthesis. The scientists said they also discovered, through computational analysis and experimental verification, different tRNA genes are produced by various combinations of split tRNA.

"It is hard to believe that long functional genes existed from the early time of ancient life. It may be possible that, as in the tRNA genes we've found, long genes may have evolved from the combination of short genes through trial and error," said graduate student Kosuke Fujishima, the first author of the research.

The scientists said their discovery represents a very rare phenomenon found in the deep-branching archaean and suggests that in ancient life, short genes could have been used in multiple combinations.

The study is reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.