Non-enzymatic copying of an RNA template is appealing as a transition from pre-life to an RNA world, but it has been difficult to demonstrate in the laboratory. Now, two separate studies focusing on RNA's backbone connectivity offer partial solutions to some of the problems raised with this hypothesis for the origin of life.
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Hernández, A., Piccirilli, J. Prebiotic RNA unstuck. Nature Chem 5, 360–362 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchem.1636
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nchem.1636
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