The molecular dance that led to the origin of life billions of years ago remains one of the deepest mysteries in modern science. Though the exact choreography is forever lost to time, scientists now say they may have identified one of the key steps. Chemists in Germany today report a plausible way in which basic chemicals available on early Earth may have given rise to compounds called purines—chemicals that are a key ingredient of DNA, RNA, and energy metabolism in all cells.
The new work is “very pretty chemistry,” says Gerald Joyce, a chemist at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, California, who specializes in the chemistry that may have given rise to life.
Joyce and others have long suggested that one of the key early events in this process was the formation of RNA—a long chainlike molecule that conveys genetic information and speeds up other chemical reactions. Both of those functions were necessary for life to evolve. But sorting out how RNA itself may have arisen—and led to an “RNA world”—has been a struggle.
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