Life on Earth comes in many diverse forms, yet there are certain biological molecules that are used by all life, appearing in every living cell throughout history.
It is thought that these compounds must have been present on the early Earth in order to allow for the emergence of life on our planet. How these compounds came to exist on the early Earth is a critical step in the origin of life as we know it, and could also be critical for life’s potential on other worlds.
A team of NASA-supported scientists have provided new information on how one class of biomolecule, nucleic acids, could have formed outside of living cells with the help of naturally occurring minerals in the environment before life’s emergence on Earth.
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