Adenosine Monophosphate Forms Ordered Arrays in Multilamellar Lipid Matrices: Insights into Assembly of Nucleic Acid for Primitive Life

A fundamental question of biology is how nucleic acids first assembled and then were incorporated into the earliest forms of cellular life 4 billion years ago. The polymerization of nucleotides is a condensation reaction in which phosphodiester bonds are formed. This reaction cannot occur in aqueous solutions, but guided polymerization in an anhydrous lipid environment could promote a non-enzymatic condensation reaction in which oligomers of …