Cover Picture: Guanine, Adenine, and Hypoxanthine Production in UV-Irradiated Formamide Solutions: Relaxation of the Requirements for Prebiotic Purine Nucleobase Formation (ChemBioChem 9/2010)

✍ Scribed by Hannah L. Barks ; Ragan Buckley ; Gregory A. Grieves; Ernesto Di Mauro; Nicholas V. Hud; Thomas M. Orlando

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 957 KB
• Volume: 11
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1439-4227
• DOI: 10.1002/cbic.201090037

✦ Synopsis

The cover picture shows a can of prebiotic soup for an improved "product", thanks to the addition of UV photons. On p. 1240 ff., N. V. Hud, T. M. Orlando and co-workers demonstrate that model prebiotic reactions with formamide as a source material produce a greater yield and diversity of purine nucleobases when formamide is irradiated with UV photons during heating, in the presence and absence of inorganic catalysts. Guanine is also observed for the first time in model prebiotic formamide reactions, as emphasized by the pasta shape. The observation that purine nucleobases are still formed in UV-irradiated/heated formamide solutions in the absence of inorganic catalysts (i.e., with "100 % less salt") further relaxes the requirements for obtaining nucleobases on the prebiotic Earth.