ArticleNature chemistry2019
The role of sugar-backbone heterogeneity and chimeras in the simultaneous emergence of RNA and DNA.
Article in Nature chemistry, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 48 papers.
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Who cites it
48 citing papers in PubMed.
- Impact of 2'-deoxyribo-purine substrates on nonenzymatic RNA template-directed primer extension.Nucleic acids research · 2025Article
- Differential stability and dynamics of DNA-based and RNA-based coacervates affect non-enzymatic RNA chemistry.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Can the origin of biosynthetic routes be explained by a Frankenstein's monster-like spontaneous assembly of prebiotic reactants?Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Chirality-Promoted Chemical Ligation and Reverse Transcription ofJournal of the American Chemical Society · 2025Article
- Selection-diversification interplay in oligonucleotide chemical evolution.Biophysics and physicobiology · 2025Article
- The Possible Crystallization Process in the Origin of Bacteria, Archaea, Viruses, and Mobile Elements.Biology · 2024Article
- On the aqueous origins of the condensation polymers of life.Nature reviews. Chemistry · 2024Review
- DNA Replication across α-l-(3'-2')-Threofuranosyl Nucleotides Mediated by Human DNA Polymerase η.Biochemistry · 2024Article
- Stem Life: A Framework for Understanding the Prebiotic-Biotic Transition.Journal of molecular evolution · 2024Article
- Alternative Pathways in Astrobiology: Reviewing and Synthesizing Contingency and Non-Biomolecular Origins of Terrestrial and Extraterrestrial Life.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- From the RNA-Peptide World: Prebiotic Reaction Conditions Compatible with Lipid Membranes for the Formation of Lipophilic Random Peptides in the Presence of Short Oligonucleotides, and More.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Pioneering role of RNA in the early evolution of life.Genetics and molecular biology · 2024Article
- Towards a prebiotic chemoton - nucleotide precursor synthesis driven by the autocatalytic formose reaction.Chemical science · 2023Article
- Rapid Chemical Ligation of DNA andJournal of the American Chemical Society · 2023Article
- On the origin of life: an RNA-focused synthesis and narrative.RNA (New York, N.Y.) · 2023Article
- Phosphorylation in liquid sulfur dioxide under prebiotically plausible conditions.Communications chemistry · 2022Article
- The Ring World: Eversion of Small Double-Stranded Polynucleotide Circlets at the Origin of DNA Double Helix, RNA Polymerization, Triplet Code, Twenty Amino Acids, and Strand Asymmetry.International journal of molecular sciences · 2022Article
- Synthesis and Characterization of Amino Acid Decyl Esters as Early Membranes for the Origins of Life.Membranes · 2022Article
- Prebiotic synthesis and triphosphorylation of 3'-amino-TNA nucleosides.Nature chemistry · 2022Article
- Nonenzymatic assembly of active chimeric ribozymes from aminoacylated RNA oligonucleotides.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
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2 authors.
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Abstract
Hypotheses of the origins of RNA and DNA are generally centred on the prebiotic synthesis of a pristine system (pre-RNA or RNA), which gives rise to its descendent. However, a lack of specificity in the synthesis of genetic polymers would probably result in chimeric sequences; the roles and fate of such sequences are unknown. Here, we show that chimeras, exemplified by mixed threose nucleic acid (TNA)-RNA and RNA-DNA oligonucleotides, preferentially bind to, and act as templates for, homogeneous TNA, RNA and DNA ligands. The chimeric templates can act as a catalyst that mediates the ligation of oligomers to give homogeneous backbone sequences, and the regeneration of the chimeric templates potentiates a scenario for a possible cross-catalytic cycle with amplification. This process provides a proof-of-principle demonstration of a heterogeneity-to-homogeneity scenario and also gives credence to the idea that DNA could appear concurrently with RNA, instead of being its later descendent.
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