Prebiotic stereoselective synthesis of purine and noncanonical pyrimidine nucleotide from nucleobases and phosphorylated carbohydrates

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Significance Much recent research into the origins of life focuses on the hypothesis that RNA emerged on early Earth by an abiotic process, and gave Earth its first access to Darwinian evolution. This article provides a key step in this process. Here, we show that the phosphorylated ribonucleoside building blocks for RNA can be made stereoselectively under a prebiotic plausible condition with canonical and noncanonical purines, and with one noncanonical pyrimidine. It also shows that threose nucleoside phosphates can be synthesized in a similar way. This result is significant in terms of numbers of steps, high stereo- and regiochemistry, scope, involvement of minerals, and likelihood of the prebiotic availability of its starting materials.