Origin of Life: some current work (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, March 11, 2014, 15:10 (3911 days ago) @ David Turell

A chemist tries molecules that may never have been part of the process, because they work and what is in life today doesn't. Cheating? or logical?:-"In Sutherland's lab, Powner began deriving tetrose nucleotide precursors, whose sugar elements contain only four carbons, under simulated prebiotic conditions. But as soon as he started having some success, he and Sutherland decided to shift their focus to the pentoses, the sugar components of RNA and DNA. Soon, Powner generated precursor molecules of the RNA pyrimidines, cytidine (C) and uridine (U), and just a few years after that, he and Sutherland figured out a way to make the complete nucleotides.1 In both cases, the researchers avoided the use of free ribose, the sugar of modern nucleotides that is unstable under prebiotic conditions, a property that had challenged results from previous synthesis experiments. "-http://www.the-scientist.com//?articles.view/articleNo/39217/title/Matthew-Powner--Origin-Solver/