Achiral, acyclic nucleic acids: synthesis and biophysical studies of a possible prebiotic polymer

Abstract

The search for prebiotic, nucleic acid precursors is, at its best, a speculative undertaking. Given the complex structure of RNA, it is not very likely that RNA was the first information system in the universe and thus finding possible precursor/s i.e. pre-RNA remains an open challenge. We, in this paper, have tried to construct nucleic acid polymers with a simple acyclic, achiral backbone. Such a linear, achiral backbone may have been formed from simple monomers that may have existed in the ``prebiotic soup''. We have shown that such polymers are capable of identifying the complementary ``other self'' and thus forming a potential system for information storage and transmission. This study thus involves investigation of nucleic acid analogues with a modified backbone that are likely to have formed in the prebiotic setting.