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May 14, 2009 | 13
This week's issue of Nature features a welcome discovery for those of us enthralled, mystified and frustrated by the study of the origins of life.
John Sutherland, a chemist at the University of Manchester, and his colleagues claim to have figured out how ribose, phosphate and the nitrogenous (nitrogen-bearing) molecules known as nucleobases first came together to form nucleotides—the building blocks of the RNA world from which life is thought to have emerged.
"My assumption is that we are here on this planet as a fundamental consequence of organic chemistry," Sutherland told The New York Times. His secret was running the experiment in stages, only adding phosphate in the final step. So far, the team has succeeded in building two of the four nucleotides; the molecule pictured [left] is cytosine, the nucleobase that, until now, scientists were unable to combine with sugars and phosphates to form the RNA nucleotide ribocytidine phosphate.*
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