How did it all start

How did life begin? It's a big question, an important aspect of which is understanding how vital biological molecules were synthesized under pre-biotic conditions. This has been an active area of research for years and a number of scenarios have been postulated. Now, Ernesto Di Mauro and colleagues (University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’) have proposed a scenario that builds on hydrogen cyanate (HCN) chemistry. They have shown that purine and pyrimidine derivatives can be synthesized directly from formamide (formed by the hydrolysis of HCN) in the presence of various metallic oxides at a fairly low temperature (160°C) [Bioorg. Med. Chem. Lett. (in press)]. This important study is the first to demonstrate that cytosine can be formed from formamide and, owing to the mild chemical conditions of the formation, has important implications for nucleotide stability. EW