Evidence map›Paper›PMID 31298852›Full record

ArticleJournal of the American Chemical Society2019

Template-Directed Nonenzymatic Primer Extension Using 2-Methylimidazole-Activated Morpholino Derivatives of Guanosine and Cytidine.

Weicheng Zhang, Ayan Pal, Alonso Ricardo, Jack W Szostak

Open access · greenAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
7citing papers in PubMed
1.1field-weighted citation impact, top 21% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

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.

2 · The registry

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.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

7 citing papers in PubMed, 15 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. The XNA alphabet.Nucleic acids research · 2025
    Review
  2. Article
  3. Article
  4. Article
  5. Article
  6. Origin of Life: The Point of No Return.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020
    Article
  7. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.

Weicheng ZhangHoward Hughes Medical Institute, Department of Molecular Biology, and Center for Computational and Integrative Biology , Massachusetts General Hospital , Boston , Massachusetts 02114 , United States.ORCID 0000-0003-3900-102X
Ayan PalHoward Hughes Medical Institute, Department of Molecular Biology, and Center for Computational and Integrative Biology , Massachusetts General Hospital , Boston , Massachusetts 02114 , United States.
Alonso RicardoHoward Hughes Medical Institute, Department of Molecular Biology, and Center for Computational and Integrative Biology , Massachusetts General Hospital , Boston , Massachusetts 02114 , United States.
Jack W SzostakHoward Hughes Medical Institute, Department of Molecular Biology, and Center for Computational and Integrative Biology , Massachusetts General Hospital , Boston , Massachusetts 02114 , United States.ORCID 0000-0003-4131-1203
Howard Hughes Medical Institute · US

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Efforts to develop self-replicating nucleic acids have led to insights into the origin of life and have also suggested potential pathways to the design of artificial life forms based on non-natural nucleic acids. The template-directed nonenzymatic polymerization of activated ribonucleotide monomers is generally slow because of the relatively weak nucleophilicity of the primer 3'-hydroxyl. To circumvent this problem, several nucleic acids based on amino-sugar nucleotides have been studied, and as expected, the more-nucleophilic amine generally results in faster primer extension. Extending this logic, we have chosen to study morpholino nucleic acid (MoNA), because the secondary amine of the morpholino-nucleotides is expected to be highly nucleophilic. We describe the synthesis of 2-methylimidazole-activated MoNA monomers from their corresponding ribonucleoside 5'-monophosphates and the synthesis of an RNA primer with a terminal MoNA nucleotide. We show that the activated G and C MoNA monomers enable rapid and efficient extension of the morpholino-terminated primer on homopolymeric and mixed-sequenced RNA templates. Our results show that MoNA is a non-natural informational polymer that is worthy of further study as a candidate self-replicating material.

Indexed as

CytidineGuanosineImidazolesMorpholinosNucleic Acid ConformationPolymerizationRNA2-methylimidazoleCytidineGuanosineImidazolesMorpholinosRNARNA primers

Identifiers

PMID31298852
PMCPMC7547883
OpenAlexW2958918493

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

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.