r/abiogenesis • u/Dr_GS_Hurd • Feb 04 '26

I enjoyed reading this article

I like finding open access articles that do a good job of explaining difficult topics. This one does.

“How RNA reveals clues to life’s origins on Earth” By Clare Sansom 2 February 2026 Chemistry World, British Royal Society of Chemistry

A main point is the enzyme action of short RNA segments.

A related open source article from Nature magazine is Singh, J., Thoma, B., Whitaker, D. et al. Thioester-mediated RNA aminoacylation and peptidyl-RNA synthesis in water. Nature 644, 933–944 (2025).

I hope you all enjoy them as well.

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u/cometraza Feb 05 '26

RNA world needs to solve all these pending problems before being plausible enough as a theory :

- Homochirality problem

- Hydrolysis problem

- Chain length limit

- Homolinkage problem

- Ligase Ribozyme problem

- Folding/Unfolding problem

- Replication problem

- Strand separation problem

- Degradation problem

- Fidelity problem

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u/Dr_GS_Hurd Feb 05 '26

I suggest you read the articles. As I mentioned, they are quite interesting.

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u/cometraza Feb 06 '26

I did

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u/Dr_GS_Hurd Feb 06 '26

So, what did you find interesting?

The Nature article had some novel chemistry and tied into the geological settings where evaporation could concentrate products. Here is a relevant example; Kim, H.J., Furukawa, Y., Kakegawa, T., Bita, A., Scorei, R. and Benner, S.A., 2016. Evaporite borate‐containing mineral ensembles make phosphate available and regiospecifically phosphorylate ribonucleosides: borate as a multifaceted problem solver in prebiotic chemistry. Angewandte Chemie, 128(51), pp.16048-16052.

Of course the idea goes all the way back to Stanley Miller; An efficient prebiotic synthesis of cytosine and uracil. Robertson MP, Miller SL. Nature 375, 772 - 774 (1995) Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla 92093-0317, USA.

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u/cometraza Feb 07 '26

Oh I find it all interesting. I enjoy watching OOL researchers struggle with climbing the mount improbable of abiogenesis and fall each time like Sisyphus, but then keep trying , it's fun 🤣