Speaker
Description
Absorption of UV photons by prebiotic chemicals is considered to be an important factor in driving important prebiotic reactions. In this seed project, we are evaluating the effect of UV radiation (260nm) on the sequence distribution of DNA and RNA oligomer pools. For this purpose, we have developed a high-throughput sequencing-based technique to simultaneously determine photodimer damage rates as a function of sequence environment. We analyzed the photo damage within 65526 distinct octamers which allows us to model and understand reliable prediction of damage formation for longer, randomly assembled polynucleotides. We show the first results of this project for photodamage in RNA and DNA, as well as a resulting possible redistribution of sequence distributions and its implications for physicochemically driven molecular evolution.