ArticleNature communications2025
Amino acids catalyse RNA formation under ambient alkaline conditions.
Article in Nature communications, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 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
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Catalytic non-energetic formation of diverse peptides on cosmic dust under extraterrestrial conditions.Communications chemistry · 2026Article
- Intermediate stages in the origin of metabolism at a phosphorylating hydrothermal vent.Science advances · 2026Article
- The selfish ribosome.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Theory for sequence selection via phase separation and oligomerization.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- A symbiotic origin of the ribosome?PNAS nexus · 2026Article
- High-Yield Prebiotic Polymerization of 2',3'-Cyclic Nucleotides under Wet-Dry Cycling.ACS central science · 2025Article
- Amino acids catalyse RNA formation under ambient alkaline conditions.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Wetware network-based AI: a chemical approach to embodied cognition for robotics and artificial intelligence.Frontiers in robotics and AI · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
Abstract
RNA and proteins are the foundation of life and a natural starting point to explore its origins. However, the prebiotic relationship between the two is asymmetric. While RNA evolved to assemble proteins from amino acids, a significant mirror-symmetric effect of amino acids to trigger the synthesis of RNA was missing. We describe ambient alkaline conditions where amino acids, without additional chemical activators, promote RNA copolymerisation more than 100-fold, starting from prebiotically plausible ribonucleoside-2',3'-cyclic phosphates. The observed effect is explained by acid-base catalysis, with optimal efficiency at pH values near the amine pK
Indexed as
Identifiers
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.