Abstract
It seems certain that the first self-replicating RNA molecules did not arise by spontaneous chemical synthesis in some prebiotic “soup.” A possible explanation for their origin is that self-replication first developed in another, “nucleic acid-like,” system which was not based on D-ribose and that RNA was formed at a later stage in evolution. One possibility for such a system, based on the non-chiral reduced sugar pentaerythritol, has recently been proposed (Schwartz, 1993). Preliminary results with the first of a series of model compounds designed to test this proposal are reported.
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© 1994 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Schwartz, A.W., Van Vliet, M.J. (1994). Chirality and the First Self-Replicating Molecules. In: Fleischaker, G.R., Colonna, S., Luisi, P.L. (eds) Self-Production of Supramolecular Structures. NATO ASI Series, vol 446. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-0754-9_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-0754-9_9
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