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Title: Unified Prebiotically Plausible Synthesis Of Pyrimidine And Purine Rna Ribonucleotides

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story [sciencemag.org]:

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In the absence of biological catalysts and metabolism, can atmospheric and geochemical processes provide the substrates and conditions required for production of biological molecules? Becker et al. devised an abiotic synthetic scheme that allows for accumulation of both purine and pyrimidine nucleoside mono- and diphosphates (see the Perspective by Hud and Fialho). A key starting material for this chemistry, hydroxylamine and/or hydroxylamine disulfonate, can form under plausible early atmospheric conditions. Cycles between wet and dry conditions provide the environments necessary to complete formation of purine and pyrimidine bases essentially in one pot.

Theories about the origin of life require chemical pathways that allow formation of life’s key building blocks under prebiotically plausible conditions. Complex molecules like RNA must have originated from small molecules whose reactivity was guided by physico-chemical processes. RNA is constructed from purine and pyrimidine nucleosides, both of which are required for accurate information transfer, and thus Darwinian evolution. Separate pathways to purines and pyrimidines have been reported, but their concurrent syntheses remain a challenge. We report the synthesis of the pyrimidine nucleosides from small molecules and ribose, driven solely by wet-dry cycles. In the presence of phosphate-containing minerals, 5′-mono- and diphosphates also form selectively in one-pot reactions. The pathway is compatible with purine synthesis, allowing the concurrent formation of all Watson-Crick bases.

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Vol 366, Issue 6461
04 October 2019

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By Sidney Becker, Jonas Feldmann, Stefan Wiedemann, Hidenori Okamura, Christina Schneider, Katharina Iwan, Antony Crisp, Martin Rossa, Tynchtyk Amatov, Thomas Carell

Concurrent synthesis of complementary ribonucleotides from geochemical precursors can proceed via wet and dry cycles.

By Sidney Becker, Jonas Feldmann, Stefan Wiedemann, Hidenori Okamura, Christina Schneider, Katharina Iwan, Antony Crisp, Martin Rossa, Tynchtyk Amatov, Thomas Carell

Concurrent synthesis of complementary ribonucleotides from geochemical precursors can proceed via wet and dry cycles.

Vol 366, Issue 6461

© 2019 American Association for the Advancement of Science [sciencemag.org]. All rights reserved. AAAS is a partner of HINARI [sciencemag.org], AGORA [fao.org], OARE [unep.org], CHORUS [sciencemag.org], CLOCKSS [sciencemag.org], CrossRef [sciencemag.org] and COUNTER [sciencemag.org].
Science ISSN 1095-9203.

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