Template-directed synthesis of novel, nucleic acid-like structures
In studying the origins of life, it is important to examine reactions of substrate mixtures that could plausibly have accumulated on the primitive earth. Nucleoside diphosphates would probably have been synthesized along with the standard nucleotides under prebiotic conditions. For these reasons, the template-directed reactions of activated derivatives of these diphosphates, alone or mixed with activated nucleotides, were investigated. An activated derivative of deoxyguanosine 3',5'-didphosphate condensed efficiently on a polycytidylate template to give oligonucleotide analogous in which each 3,5'ophosphodiester bond was replaced by a pyrophosphate linkage. Oligomers were formed even in the absence of a template, but much more slowly. Template-directed condensation occurred also with an analogous deoxadenosine derivative on polyuridylic acid and with an analogous acycloguanosine derivative on polycytidylic acid.