Abstract
It is proposed that the mineral or metal ion catalyzed formation of RNA oligomers may have proceeded on the primitive earth. A variety of minerals including iron oxide hydroxides, apatite and montmorillonite bind nucleotides but so far only montmorillonite has been observed to catalyze the formation of RNA oligomers. The polymerization of aminoacyl adenylates is also observed to take place on montmorillonite with the formation of polypeptides. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that the prebiotic formation of biological polymers took place on mineral surfaces. These polymeric species may have been the precursors to the RNA World.
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© 1993 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Ferris, J.P. (1993). Prebiotic Synthesis on Minerals: RNA Oligomer Formation. In: Greenberg, J.M., Mendoza-Gómez, C.X., Pirronello, V. (eds) The Chemistry of Life’s Origins. NATO ASI Series, vol 416. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-1936-8_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-1936-8_11
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