Evidence for thermal stability of ribosomal DNA sequences in hydrothermal-vent organisms

Abstract

This paper reports the results of experiments designed to investigate the relationship between thermal stability of DNA and the physical and chemical conditions experienced by various species of invertebrates, with particular reference to hydrothermal vent organisms. The major conclusion is that thermal stability correlates positively with environmental temperature within the DNA regions encoding ribosomal RNA, but not throughout the genome. Increased thermal stability (based it is supposed on an increase in G-C content) of rDNA relative to total DNA confers protection to coding sequences which would otherwise be susceptible to damage during transcription. An increase in G-C content of rDNA will lead to an increase in G-C levels in rRNA which forms a major structural component of ribosomes, thus conferring increased thermal and chemical stability to these sites of amino acid synthesis within the cell.