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Related: About this forumChemists find a recipe that may have jump-started life on Earth
How to produce the RNA bases from very simple chemicals:
Those building blockscytosine, uracil, adenine, and guaninehave previously been re-created in the lab from other starting materials. In 2009, chemists led by John Sutherland at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom devised a set of five compounds likely present on early Earth that could give rise to cytosine and uracil, collectively known as pyrimidines. Then, 2 years ago, researchers led by Thomas Carell, a chemist at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany, reported that his team had an equally easy way to form adenine and guanine, the building blocks known as purines. But the two sets of chemical reactions were different. No one knew how the conditions for making both pairs of building blocks could have occurred in the same place at the same time.
...
Carells story starts with only six molecular building blocksoxygen, nitrogen, methane, ammonia, water, and hydrogen cyanide, all of which would have been present on early Earth. Other research groups had shown that these molecules could react to form somewhat more complex compounds than the ones Carell used.
To make the pyrimidines, Carell started with compounds called cyanoacetylene and hydroxylamine, which react to form compounds called amino-isoxazoles. These, in turn, react with another simple molecule, urea, to form compounds that then react with a sugar called ribose to make one last set of intermediate compounds.
Finally, in the presence of sulfur-containing compounds called thiols and trace amounts of iron or nickel salts, these intermediates transform into the pyrimidines cytosine and uracil. As a bonus, this last reaction is triggered when the metals in the salts harbor extra positive charges, which is precisely what occurs in the final step in a similar molecular cascade that produces the purines, adenine and guanine. Even better, the step that leads to all four nucleotides works in one pot, Carell says, offering for the first time a plausible explanation of how all of RNAs building blocks could have arisen side by side.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/10/chemists-find-recipe-may-have-jump-started-life-earth
...
Carells story starts with only six molecular building blocksoxygen, nitrogen, methane, ammonia, water, and hydrogen cyanide, all of which would have been present on early Earth. Other research groups had shown that these molecules could react to form somewhat more complex compounds than the ones Carell used.
To make the pyrimidines, Carell started with compounds called cyanoacetylene and hydroxylamine, which react to form compounds called amino-isoxazoles. These, in turn, react with another simple molecule, urea, to form compounds that then react with a sugar called ribose to make one last set of intermediate compounds.
Finally, in the presence of sulfur-containing compounds called thiols and trace amounts of iron or nickel salts, these intermediates transform into the pyrimidines cytosine and uracil. As a bonus, this last reaction is triggered when the metals in the salts harbor extra positive charges, which is precisely what occurs in the final step in a similar molecular cascade that produces the purines, adenine and guanine. Even better, the step that leads to all four nucleotides works in one pot, Carell says, offering for the first time a plausible explanation of how all of RNAs building blocks could have arisen side by side.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/10/chemists-find-recipe-may-have-jump-started-life-earth
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Chemists find a recipe that may have jump-started life on Earth (Original Post)
muriel_volestrangler
Oct 2018
OP
NNadir
(33,512 posts)1. Impressive. I'll pick up their paper when they publish. This info came from a conference.
From what I read here though, they haven't answered the biggest problem, the chirality of ribose.
AZ8theist
(5,452 posts)2. This is nonsense...
EVERYONE knows everything was poofed into existence 6000 years ago!!!
Just ask Ken Ham!! He's a sciency-type expert!!
calimary
(81,193 posts)3. Fascinating stuff! Thanks for posting this, muriel!
Sneederbunk
(14,289 posts)4. This recipe can be yours for $19.95 plus shipping and handling.
Danascot
(4,690 posts)5. I substituted
nutritional yeast for ammonia, soy milk for water, and turmeric for hydrogen cyanide and it was just horrible. I'm never making that recipe again. I wouldn't even give it one star.
Baitball Blogger
(46,698 posts)6. Genesis!