Life is made of the intimate interaction of metabolism and genetics, both built around the
chemistry of the most common elements of the Universe (hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and …

Abstract 50 years after the historical Miller–Urey experiment, the formamide‐based scenario
is perhaps the most powerful concurrent hypothesis for the origin of life on our planet …

The synthesis of RNA chains from 3′, 5′-cAMP and 3′, 5′-cGMP was observed. The
RNA chains formed in water, at moderate temperatures (40–90° C), in the absence of …

Molecular Darwinian evolution is an intrinsic property of reacting pools of molecules
resulting in the adaptation of the system to changing conditions. It has no a priori aim. From …

We describe the one-pot synthesis of a large panel of nucleic bases and related compounds
from formamide in the presence of iron sulfur and iron− copper sulfur minerals as catalysts …

The controlled assembly of synthetic polymer structures is now possible with an
unprecedented range of functional groups and molecular architectures. In this critical review …

In pursuing the origin of informational polymers, we followed the assumption that their
spontaneous formation could only have occurred:(i) if all the components were present at …

Reactions of formamide (NH2COH) in the presence of catalysts of both terrestrial and
meteoritic origin yield, in plausible and variegated conditions, a large panel of precursors of …

Mineral components of the Murchison meteorite were investigated in terms of potential
catalytic effects on synthetic and hydrolytic reactions related to ribonucleic acid. We found …

The high-energy 3′, 5′ phosphodiester linkages conserved in 3′, 5′ cyclic GMPs offer a
genuine solution for monomer activation required by the transphosphorylation reactions that …