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PREBIOTIC CHEMISTRY

Making nucleic acid monomers

Nature Chemistry volume 14, pages 725–727 (2022)Cite this article

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Amino-containing four-carbon threose nucleic acids (TNAs) have long been considered to be prebiotically irrelevant due to their difficult formation. Now, a prebiotically plausible route to 3′-amino-TNA nucleoside triphosphate has been developed, raising the possibility of 3′-amino-TNA as a non-canonical nucleic acid during the origin of life.

The ability of RNA to perform dual roles of encoding genetic information and catalysing essential reactions in extant life lays the foundation for the “RNA world” hypothesis, which suggests that RNA was the first nucleic acid for the origin of life1. However, the prebiotic chemistry that gave rise to RNA might have produced nucleic acid molecules with alternative sugar backbones in the structural neighbourhood2,3. Motivated by exploring alternative nucleoside structures that can be formed under prebiotically plausible conditions, and investigating the question of why nature chose RNA as the molecular basis of life’s genetic material, researchers pioneered by Albert Eschenmoser and colleagues have discovered non-canonical nucleotides, which might be possible genetic polymers at the origin of life4,5.

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Fig. 1: The streamlined scheme of 3′-amino-threose nucleic acid triphosphate synthesis under prebiotically plausible conditions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Cancer Hospital of the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Zhejiang Cancer Hospital), Institute of Basic Medicine and Cancer (IBMC), Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China

    Yingyu Liu & Yajun Wang

  2. College of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Soochow University, Suzhou, China

    Yingyu Liu & Yajun Wang

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  1. Yingyu Liu
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  2. Yajun Wang
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Correspondence to Yajun Wang.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Liu, Y., Wang, Y. Making nucleic acid monomers. Nat. Chem. 14, 725–727 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-022-00985-2

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