Editing Purine (section)

==Prebiotic synthesis of purine ribonucleosides==

In order to understand how [[life]] arose, knowledge is required of the chemical pathways that permit formation of the key building blocks of life under plausible [[abiogenesis|prebiotic conditions]].  Nam et al. (2018)<ref>{{cite journal |vauthors=Nam I, Nam HG, Zare RN |title=Abiotic synthesis of purine and pyrimidine ribonucleosides in aqueous microdroplets |journal=Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A |volume=115 |issue=1 |pages=36–40 |date=January 2018 |pmid=29255025 |pmc=5776833 |doi=10.1073/pnas.1718559115 }}</ref> demonstrated the direct condensation of purine and pyrimidine nucleobases with ribose to give ribonucleosides in aqueous microdroplets, a key step leading to RNA formation. Also, a plausible prebiotic process for synthesizing purine ribonucleosides was presented by Becker ''et al''. in 2016.<ref>{{cite journal |vauthors=Becker S, Thoma I, Deutsch A, Gehrke T, Mayer P, Zipse H, Carell T |title=A high-yielding, strictly regioselective prebiotic purine nucleoside formation pathway |journal=Science |volume=352 |issue=6287 |pages=833–6 |date=May 2016 |pmid=27174989 |doi=10.1126/science.aad2808 }}</ref>