RESEARCH ARTICLE Random-sequence genetic oligomer pools display an innate potential for ligation and recombination Hannes Mutschler1†‡*, Alexander I Taylor1†, Benjamin T Porebski1, Alice Lightowlers1§, Gillian Houlihan1, Mikhail Abramov2, Piet Herdewijn2, Philipp Holliger1* 1MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, United Kingdom; 2REGA Institute, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium Abstract Recombination, the exchange of information between different genetic polymer strands, is of fundamental importance in biology for genome maintenance and genetic diversification and is mediated by dedicated recombinase enzymes. Here, we describe an innate capacity for non-enzymatic recombination (and ligation) in random-sequence genetic oligomer pools. Specifically, we examine random and semi-random eicosamer (N20) pools of RNA, DNA and *For correspondence: the unnatural genetic polymers ANA (arabino-), HNA (hexitol-) and AtNA (altritol-nucleic acids). Correspondence to: ph1@mrc- While DNA, ANA and HNA pools proved inert, RNA (and to a lesser extent AtNA) pools displayed lmb.cam.ac.uk;
[email protected] diverse modes of spontaneous intermolecular recombination, connecting recombination mechanistically to the vicinal ring cis-diol configuration shared by RNA and AtNA. Thus, the † These authors contributed chemical constitution that renders both susceptible to hydrolysis emerges as the fundamental equally to this work determinant of an innate capacity for recombination, which is shown to promote a concomitant Present address: