Was Adenine the First Purine?
- 8 September 1989
- journal article
- other
- Published by American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Science
- Vol. 245 (4922), 1102-1104
- https://doi.org/10.1126/science.11538344
Abstract
Oligomerization of HCN (1 molar) in the presence of added formaldehyde (0.5 molar) produced an order of magnitude more 8-hydroxymethyladenine than adenine or any other biologically significant purine. This result suggests that on the prebiotic Earth, nucleoside analogs may have been synthesized directly in more complex mixtures of HCN with other aldehydes.Keywords
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