US-Sweden Cooperative Science: Oligonucleotide Synthesis on Minerals

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This award will support collaborative research between Professor James P. Ferris, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Dr. Nils G. Holm, University of Stockholm, in studies aimed at understanding the beginnings of life on earth. In particular, the role of various minerals serving as catalysts for the formation of RNA-like polymers under conditions approximating those that may have existed on the primitive earth will be investigated. Iron-containing minerals were likely catalysts for the formation of such polymers on the primitive earth, and this research will study how effectively such minerals catalyze the formation of the phosphate ester bond. Dr. Holm's earlier work has been as a geological chemist; he will prepare the minerals and confirm their structure. Prof. Ferris, a chemist, will investigate their catalytic properties. This project brings together the chemical and geological disciplines; Prof. Ferris, an expert in pre-biological organic reactions and in the types of organic structures that would have been important in the first living systems, will work with an expert in geological environments and the possible reaction conditions in those environments. This research should result in the identification of a set of minerals which may have been important catalysts for the formation of structures essential to the origin of life on the primitive earth.