ArticleLife (Basel, Switzerland)2015
Characterization of RNA-Like Oligomers from Lipid-Assisted Nonenzymatic Synthesis: Implications for Origin of Informational Molecules on Early Earth.
Article in Life (Basel, Switzerland), 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 papers.
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Who cites it
24 citing papers in PubMed.
- Abiotic synthesis of RNase-resistant phosphodiester and pyrophosphate-linked polymers via thermodynamically controlled wet-dry cycling.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- The secret life of RNA and lipids.RNA biology · 2025Review
- Significant impacts of metal ions from ancient oceans on nucleoside phosphorylation.BMC chemistry · 2025Article
- Assembly of catalytic complexes from randomized oligonucleotides.Science advances · 2025Article
- Reciprocating thermochemical mediator of pre-biotic polymer decomposition on mineral surfaces.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2025Article
- The Origin of RNA and the Formose-Ribose-RNA Pathway.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Review
- A Prebiotic Genetic Nucleotide as an Early Darwinian Ancestor for Pre-RNA Evolution.ACS omega · 2024Article
- Spontaneous emergence of membrane-forming protoamphiphiles from a lipid-amino acid mixture under wet-dry cycles.Chemical science · 2021Article
- Prebiological Membranes and Their Role in the Emergence of Early Cellular Life.The Journal of membrane biology · 2020Review
- Geochemical influences on nonenzymatic oligomerization of prebiotically relevant cyclic nucleotides.RNA (New York, N.Y.) · 2020Article
- The Hot Spring Hypothesis for an Origin of Life.Astrobiology · 2020Review
- Lipid-Assisted Polymerization of Nucleotides.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2019Review
- Formation of Abasic Oligomers in Nonenzymatic Polymerization of Canonical Nucleotides.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2019Article
- Progress in synthesizing protocells.Experimental biology and medicine (Maywood, N.J.) · 2019Review
- Templated replication (or lack thereof) under prebiotically pertinent conditions.Scientific reports · 2018Article
- Possible Emergence of Sequence Specific RNA Aminoacylation via Peptide Intermediary to Initiate Darwinian Evolution and Code Through Origin of Life.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2018Article
- Formation and Stability of Prebiotically Relevant Vesicular Systems in Terrestrial Geothermal Environments.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2017Article
- Taming Prebiotic Chemistry: The Role of Heterogeneous and Interfacial Catalysis in the Emergence of a Prebiotic Catalytic/Information Polymer System.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2016Review
- Co-operation between Polymerases and Nucleotide Synthetases in the RNA World.PLoS computational biology · 2016Article
- Organization of Nucleotides in Different Environments and the Formation of Pre-Polymers.Scientific reports · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Prebiotic polymerization had to be a nonenzymatic, chemically driven process. These processes would have been particularly favored in scenarios which push reaction regimes far from equilibrium. Dehydration-rehydration (DH-RH) cycles are one such regime thought to have been prevalent on prebiotic Earth in niches like volcanic geothermal pools. The present study defines the optimum DH-RH reaction conditions for lipid-assisted polymerization of nucleotides. The resultant products were characterized to understand their chemical makeup. Primarily, our study demonstrates that the resultant RNA-like oligomers have abasic sites, which means these oligomers lack information-carrying capability because of losing most of their bases during the reaction process. This results from low pH and high temperature conditions, which, importantly, also allows the formation of sugar-phosphate oligomers when ribose 5'-monophosphates are used as the starting monomers instead. Formation of such oligomers would have permitted sampling of a large variety of bases on a preformed polymer backbone, resulting in "prebiotic phosphodiester polymers" prior to the emergence of modern RNA-like molecules. This suggests that primitive genetic polymers could have utilized bases that conferred greater N-glycosyl bond stability, a feature crucial for information propagation in low pH and high temperature regimes of early Earth.
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Registered trials
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