If life began with RNA — as one theory posits — then the first RNA molecules would have emerged from simple ingredients on early Earth. In a step towards supporting this 'RNA world' theory, biochemists have now shown that all four of RNA’s major components can be assembled efficiently from simple chemicals in conditions that, they argue, might have been present billions of years ago on our planet.
A study published in 2009 described an easy way to create two of RNA’s building blocks, called ribonucleotides1. And in a paper published in Science on 12 May, scientists now demonstrate a straightforward chemical pathway to the formation of the other two2.
“It is a very nice piece of work and certainly comparable in significance to the 2009 paper,” says Gerald Joyce, an origins-of-life researcher at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. But objectors who favour other explanations of life’s origins are not swayed. While chemists have sought ways to create RNA out of pools of simple chemicals in warm water, these might not be the most plausible conditions for the beginnngs of life on Earth, they argue.
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