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Science 8 September 1989:
Vol. 245. no. 4922, pp. 1102 - 1104
DOI: 10.1126/science.11538344
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Articles

Science, Vol 245, Issue 4922, 1102-1104
Copyright © 1989 by American Association for the Advancement of Science

articles

Was adenine the first purine?

AW Schwartz and CG Bakker

Laboratory of Exobiology, University of Nijmegen Toernooiveld, the Netherlands.

Oligomerization of HCN (1 molar) in the presence of added formaldehyde (0.5 molar) produced an order of magnitude more 8-hydroxymethyladenine than adenine or any other biologically significant purine. This result suggests that on the prebiotic Earth, nucleoside analogs may have been synthesized directly in more complex mixtures of HCN with other aldehydes.


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Probing the Energetic and Structural Role of Amino Acid/Nucleobase Cation-pi Interactions in Protein-Ligand Complexes.
C. Biot, E. Buisine, J.-M. Kwasigroch, R. Wintjens, and M. Rooman (2002)
J. Biol. Chem. 277, 40816-40822
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