ArticleIsrael journal of chemistry2013
On the Origin of the Canonical Nucleobases: An Assessment of Selection Pressures across Chemical and Early Biological Evolution.
Article in Israel journal of chemistry, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 30 papers.
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Who cites it
30 citing papers in PubMed.
- Complex and Messy Prebiotic Chemistry: Obstacles and Opportunities for an RNA World.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- A scope of prebiotic neat reaction conditions and the mechanism of urea-assisted phosphorylations of alcohols.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Purine Chemistry in the Early RNA World at the Origins of Life: From RNA and Nucleobases Lesions to Current Key Metabolic Routes.Chembiochem : a European journal of chemical biology · 2025Review
- Reactant Discovery with anACS earth & space chemistry · 2024Article
- Prebiotic synthesis of dihydrouridine by photoreduction of uridine in formamide.Chemical communications (Cambridge, England) · 2024Article
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- Pioneering role of RNA in the early evolution of life.Genetics and molecular biology · 2024Article
- Peptide conjugates with polyaromatic hydrocarbons can benefit the activity of catalytic RNAs.Chemical science · 2023Article
- Electron transport chains as a window into the earliest stages of evolution.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- tModBase: deciphering the landscape of tRNA modifications and their dynamic changes from epitranscriptome data.Nucleic acids research · 2023Article
- Nucleobases in Meteorites to Nucleobases in RNA and DNA?Journal of molecular evolution · 2022Article
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- Exploring the Influence of Intermolecular Interactions in Prebiotic Chemistry Using Laser Spectroscopy and Calculations.Chemistry (Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, Germany) · 2022Article
- Illuminating Life's Origins: UV Photochemistry in Abiotic Synthesis of Biomolecules.Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2021Review
- Ultraviolet-Driven Deamination of Cytidine Ribonucleotides Under Planetary Conditions.Astrobiology · 2020Article
- Article
- Modified nucleotides may have enhanced early RNA catalysis.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
- Nucleobase Derivatives as Building Blocks to Form Ru(II)-Based Complexes with High Cytotoxicity.ACS omega · 2020Article
- Formation of Abasic Oligomers in Nonenzymatic Polymerization of Canonical Nucleotides.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2019Article
- Alarmones as Vestiges of a Bygone RNA World.Journal of molecular evolution · 2019Article
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Abstract
The native bases of RNA and DNA are prominent examples of the narrow selection of organic molecules upon which life is based. How did nature "decide" upon these specific heterocycles? Evidence suggests that many types of heterocycles could have been present on the early Earth. It is therefore likely that the contemporary composition of nucleobases is a result of multiple selection pressures that operated during early chemical and biological evolution. The persistence of the fittest heterocycles in the prebiotic environment towards, for example, hydrolytic and photochemical assaults, may have given some nucleobases a selective advantage for incorporation into the first informational polymers. The prebiotic formation of polymeric nucleic acids employing the native bases remains, however, a challenging problem to reconcile. Hypotheses have proposed that the emerging RNA world may have included many types of nucleobases. This is supported by the extensive utilization of non-canonical nucleobases in extant RNA and the resemblance of many of the modified bases to heterocycles generated in simulated prebiotic chemistry experiments. Selection pressures in the RNA world could have therefore narrowed the composition of the nucleic acid bases. Two such selection pressures may have been related to genetic fidelity and duplex stability. Considering these possible selection criteria, the native bases along with other related heterocycles seem to exhibit a certain level of fitness. We end by discussing the strength of the
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