NASA Postdoctoral Program - ICAR - Bringing RNA to Life Emergence of Biological Catalysis

The NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) offers unique research opportunities to highly-talented scientists to engage in ongoing NASA research projects at a NASA Center, NASA Headquarters, or at a NASA-affiliated research institute. These one- to three-year fellowships are competitive and are designed to advance NASA's missions in space science, Earth science, aeronautics, space operations, exploration systems, and astrobiology. This specific opportunity focuses on exploring how catalytic RNAs (ribozymes) could have emerged and functioned to support early life. The ICAR team uses in vitro selection and engineering of new ribozymes, biophysical and informatic analysis of existing ribozymes and aptamers, and in vivo ribozyme evaluation in engineered bacterial strains to explore these questions. The immediate objective is to build new, robust, multiple-turnover ribozymes for biologically relevant reactions including NTP synthesis, aminoacyl-tRNA synthesis, nucleotide cofactor synthesis, alkyl and methyltransfer, and redox reactions. The research provides experimental underpinning to a critical missing piece of the RNA world puzzle: emergence of robust, truly catalytic, multiple-turnover ribozymes as precursors to contemporary metabolic pathways.