Researchers report that sugar phosphorylation and uridine synthesis, two biologically essential reactions that are thermodynamically and kinetically unfavorable in bulk solution, occurred spontaneously in microdroplets, without enzymes or ATP, and that sugar phosphorylation had a smaller entropic cost in microdroplets than in bulk solution, suggesting that prebiotic formation of biologically relevant molecules could have occurred in microdroplets.
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Article #17-14896: "Abiotic production of sugar phosphates and uridine ribonucleoside in aqueous microdroplets," by Inho Nam, Jae Kyoo Lee, Hong Gil Nam, and Richard N. Zare.
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences