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Science 17 November 2000:
Vol. 290. no. 5495, pp. 1306 - 1307
DOI: 10.1126/science.290.5495.1306
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Perspectives

Also see the archival list of Science's Compass: Enhanced Perspectives

ORIGIN OF LIFE:
Enhanced: A Simpler Nucleic Acid

Leslie Orgel

What was the genetic material of the earliest life forms on Earth if it was not RNA? As Orgel explains in his Perspective, the answer may be simpler nucleic acid polymers perhaps like the RNA analogs called (L)-a-threofuranosyl oligonucleotides or TNAs (Schöning et al.). These molecules have threose rather than ribose in their sugar-phosphate backbones and yet retain many of the properties of RNA including the ability to pair up in double helices.

The author is at the Salk Institute for Biomedical Study, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA. E-mail: orgel{at}salk.edu

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Conditions for the emergence of life on the early Earth: summary and reflections.
J. Jortner (2006)
Phil Trans R Soc B 361, 1877-1891
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Prebiotic Amino Acids as Asymmetric Catalysts.
S. Pizzarello and A. L. Weber (2004)
Science 303, 1151
   Full Text »    PDF »


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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)