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Revolutionary Gene-Editing Tool
In a fresh look at the origin of life on Earth, an Indian-origin researcher Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy and his team from Scripps Research in California have made a discovery that a DNA-RNA compound called diamidophosphate (DAP) was plausibly present on Earth before life began and that the first self-replicating molecules the first life forms on Earth were mixes of the two.
The newly described chemical reaction could have assembled DNA building blocks before life forms and their enzymes existed, said the team whose findings were published in a chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie.
The study points out the possibility that DNA and its close chemical cousin RNA arose together as products of similar chemical reactions, and that the first self-replicating molecules - the first life forms on Earth - were mixes of the two.