ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America1999
Prebiotic cytosine synthesis: a critical analysis and implications for the origin of life.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 1999. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 41 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
41 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- Complex and Messy Prebiotic Chemistry: Obstacles and Opportunities for an RNA World.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Spraying of water microdroplets forms luminescence and causes chemical reactions in surrounding gas.Science advances · 2025Article
- Computational prediction for the formation of amides and thioamides in the gas phase interstellar medium.Frontiers in chemistry · 2025Article
- On the aqueous origins of the condensation polymers of life.Nature reviews. Chemistry · 2024Review
- Article
- Hexose phosphorylation for a non-enzymatic glycolysis and pentose phosphate pathway on early Earth.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Carbonyl Migration in Uronates Affords a Potential Prebiotic Pathway for Pentose Production.JACS Au · 2023Article
- Uracil in the carbonaceous asteroid (162173) Ryugu.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Rethinking nucleic acids from their origins to their applications.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
- Azoles as Auxiliaries and Intermediates in Prebiotic Nucleoside Synthesis.Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2022Article
- Borate-guided ribose phosphorylation for prebiotic nucleotide synthesis.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- The Codon Usage in the Minimal Natural Cell.Origins of life and evolution of the biosphere : the journal of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life · 2021Article
- Proto-Urea-RNA (Wöhler RNA) Containing Unusually Stable Urea Nucleosides.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2019Review
- Could Purines Be Formed from Cyanamide and Cyanoacetylene in a Prebiotic Earth Environment?ACS omega · 2019Article
- Prebiotic Sugar Formation Under Nonaqueous Conditions and Mechanochemical Acceleration.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2019Article
- The RNA i-Motif in the Primordial RNA World.Origins of life and evolution of the biosphere : the journal of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life · 2019Article
- Metabolomics Reveals Metabolic Changes Caused by Low-Dose 4-Tert-Octylphenol in Mice Liver.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2018Article
- Rewarming the Primordial Soup: Revisitations and Rediscoveries in Prebiotic Chemistry.Chembiochem : a European journal of chemical biology · 2018Review
- On the Early Evolution of Catabolic Pathways: A Comparative Genomics Approach. I. The Cases of Glucose, Ribose, and the Nucleobases Catabolic Routes.Journal of molecular evolution · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
A number of theories propose that RNA, or an RNA-like substance, played a role in the origin of life. Usually, such hypotheses presume that the Watson-Crick bases were readily available on prebiotic Earth, for spontaneous incorporation into a replicator. Cytosine, however, has not been reported in analyses of meteorites nor is it among the products of electric spark discharge experiments. The reported prebiotic syntheses of cytosine involve the reaction of cyanoacetylene (or its hydrolysis product, cyanoacetaldehyde), with cyanate, cyanogen, or urea. These substances undergo side reactions with common nucleophiles that appear to proceed more rapidly than cytosine formation. To favor cytosine formation, reactant concentrations are required that are implausible in a natural setting. Furthermore, cytosine is consumed by deamination (the half-life for deamination at 25 degrees C is approximately 340 yr) and other reactions. No reactions have been described thus far that would produce cytosine, even in a specialized local setting, at a rate sufficient to compensate for its decomposition. On the basis of this evidence, it appears quite unlikely that cytosine played a role in the origin of life. Theories that involve replicators that function without the Watson-Crick pairs, or no replicator at all, remain as viable alternatives.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.