ArticleLife (Basel, Switzerland)2020
On the Potential of Silicon as a Building Block for Life.
Article in Life (Basel, Switzerland), 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 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
12 citing papers in PubMed.
- Recent Advancements in the Diversification and Applications of Boron-Containing Compounds in Medicinal Chemistry.Pharmaceuticals (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Applications of carbon-silicon bioisosterism in drug design and development.Future medicinal chemistry · 2025Article
- The Pigment World: Life's Origins as Photon-Dissipating Pigments.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Reasons why life on Earth rarely makes fluorine-containing compounds and their implications for the search for life beyond Earth.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Can Isotopologues Be Used as Biosignature Gases in Exoplanet Atmospheres?Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- The Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics of Natural Selection: From Molecules to the Biosphere.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Asymptotic burnout and homeostatic awakening: a possible solution to the Fermi paradox?Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2022Article
- From SiOACS omega · 2021Review
- An Update on Mesoporous Silica Nanoparticle Applications in Nanomedicine.Pharmaceutics · 2021Review
- Biocatalytic Transformations of Silicon-the Other Group 14 Element.ACS central science · 2021Review
- The Different Story ofMolecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Evaluating Alternatives to Water as Solvents for Life: The Example of Sulfuric Acid.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Despite more than one hundred years of work on organosilicon chemistry, the basis for the plausibility of silicon-based life has never been systematically addressed nor objectively reviewed. We provide a comprehensive assessment of the possibility of silicon-based biochemistry, based on a review of what is known and what has been modeled, even including speculative work. We assess whether or not silicon chemistry meets the requirements for chemical diversity and reactivity as compared to carbon. To expand the possibility of plausible silicon biochemistry, we explore silicon's chemical complexity in diverse solvents found in planetary environments, including water, cryosolvents, and sulfuric acid. In no environment is a life based primarily around silicon chemistry a plausible option. We find that in a water-rich environment silicon's chemical capacity is highly limited due to ubiquitous silica formation; silicon can likely only be used as a rare and specialized heteroatom. Cryosolvents (e.g., liquid N
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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.