ArticleChembiochem : a European journal of chemical biology2022
Prebiotic Foam Environments to Oligomerize and Accumulate RNA.
Article in Chembiochem : a European journal of chemical biology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Theory for sequence selection via phase separation and oligomerization.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Emergent Chemical Reactivity and Complexity of RNA Condensates.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2025Article
- The secret life of RNA and lipids.RNA biology · 2025Review
- Article
- Nonequilibrium Wet-Dry Cycling Acts as a Catalyst for Chemical Reactions.The journal of physical chemistry. B · 2024Article
- Crystallization as a selection force at the polymerization of nucleotides in a prebiotic context.iScience · 2023Article
- Prebiotic Foam Environments to Oligomerize and Accumulate RNA.Chembiochem : a European journal of chemical biology · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
10 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
When water interacts with porous rocks, its wetting and surface tension properties create air bubbles in large number. To probe their relevance as a setting for the emergence of life, we microfluidically created foams that were stabilized with lipids. A persistent non-equilibrium setting was provided by a thermal gradient. The foam's large surface area triggers capillary flows and wet-dry reactions that accumulate, aggregate and oligomerize RNA, offering a compelling habitat for RNA-based early life as it offers both wet and dry conditions in direct neighborhood. Lipids were screened to stabilize the foams. The prebiotically more probable myristic acid stabilized foams over many hours. The capillary flow created by the evaporation at the water-air interface provided an attractive force for molecule localization and selection for molecule size. For example, self-binding oligonucleotide sequences accumulated and formed micrometer-sized aggregates which were shuttled between gas bubbles. The wet-dry cycles at the foam bubble interfaces triggered a non-enzymatic RNA oligomerization from 2',3'-cyclic CMP and GMP which despite the small dry reaction volume was superior to the corresponding dry reaction. The found characteristics make heated foams an interesting, localized setting for early molecular evolution.
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Registered trials
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