From Oparin to Miller - and beyond

The experiment was published in 1953 (Miller, 1953), the same year as the discovery of the double helix by Watson and Crick, a memorable year indeed for biochemistry. 

There is only limited agreement on whether primitive atmospheric conditions were really reductive. However this is not the key point. The key point is the fact that relatively complex biochemicals can be formed from a mixture of very simple gaseous components in a chemical pathway that can indeed be regarded as prebiotic. 

Following Miller s experiment, many chemists successfully synthesized other compounds of biochemical relevance under prebiotic conditions - thereby demonstrating convincingly that several molecular bricks of life might have been present on prebiotic Earth. 

The prebiotic synthesis of pyrimidines is based on cyanoacetylene, which is obtained in good yields by sparking mixtures of methane and nitrogen and by the 

It should be kept in mind that these prebiotic syntheses concern only the bases, and not the mononucleotides of the nucleic acids. The mononucleotide consists of three moieties attached to each other - the base, the phosphate, and the sugar - and we do not yet know how this prebiotic synthesis may have taken place. 

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From Oparin to Miller - and beyond --------------------Reverse aldot ---------... 

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