The Origins of Nucleotides

Abstract

The origins of life represent one of the most fundamental chemical questions being addressed by modern science. One of the longstanding mysteries of this field is what series of chemical reactions could lead to the molecular biologists dream; a pool of homochiral nucleotides? Here we summarize those results we consider to be historically important and outline our recently published research aimed at understanding the chemoselective origins of the ­canonical ribonucleotides.