Evolution.

Society for Experimental Biology

Date:: 1953

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Credit: Evolution. Source: Wellcome Collection.

42/484 (page 18)

$i8 THE ORIGIN OF LIFE spatially orientated by the coupling of the phosphate to a large organic framework, such as is found, for example, in the nucleic acids (Fig. 2). If an energy-rich form of nucleic acid molecule were capable of existence H H \ / C=C CH3+HP3O4 н/ V Butene-1 H \ H—c= и H H H / =C СНз ^ H с H—C—с CH3 + H3PO4 / Y/ H с \ H о о \ / p / \ о о / \ H H Fig. I. Isomerization of butene catalysed by phosphoric acid. (Turkevich & Smith, 1946.) Butene-2 CH CH. N С / Ч / NH2 с \/ Ч с с II I N N \ ^ сн N—СН \. N—СО / \ СН 1 СН о СН, о он ч о о CH. \ NH.—с N—СН ./ СН I СН сн=сн о (Adenine) (Cytosine) Fig. 2. Coupling of nucleotides through phosphoric acid in the nucleic acid molecule. in equilibrium with freely diffusable energy-rich phosphate compounds in the protoplasm, it is not impossible that the energy for a synthetic process as well as the catalysis needed to lower the activation threshold for the reaction might be combined in a single molecular structure. This would represent the culminating triumph of that process in biochemical evolution$

Evolution.

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