Structural assemblies for an RNA world

Authors

Ren, Y., Zhang, Z., Chen, K., Li, M., Xie, Y., Bai, T., Huang, B., Xiao, B., Westhof, E., Lilley, D. M. J., Wang, J., Miao, Z., Wei, X., Huang, L.

Abstract

Protein homo-oligomerization widely generates symmetric assemblies for encapsulation and scaffolding. Conversely, natural RNA quaternary structures appear limited, with known RNA-only multimers predominantly forming dimers or dihedral assemblies from long transcripts. Whether short RNAs can access broader higher-order assembly space has remained unclear. Here, using cryo-EM, we show that RNAs under 200 nucleotides form three distinct structural classes: a 60-subunit viral-capsid-like icosahedron, non-caged oligomers including a trimer and a strand-exchanged dimer, and a continuous filament assembled from a 57-nucleotide RNA. These structures demonstrate that assembly complexity does not simply scale with RNA length; compact RNAs can specify architectures traditionally associated with proteins. Our findings broaden the known RNA quaternary repertoire, strengthen the structural plausibility of higher-order organization in an RNA world, and establish foundational reference architectures to guide future RNA-based self-assembling nanoparticle design.

Preprint server: bioRxiv
The authors list and abstract were imported from bioRxiv on 03 Jul 2026.

Stats

1-terrible, 9-excellent. How would you rate this preprint? Sign in in to submit your rating.

Post a comment

You need to be signed in to post comments. You can sign in here.

Comments

There are no comments yet.