Water: The First Archaic Mutagen of Evolution, the Adoptive Mother of Currently Nucleic Acids

Abstract

Within the series of evolutions which start from the origin of the universe and still cannot, by definition, be considered concluded, certainly among the geothermal evolution end and the beginning of the chemical one, on Earth, the moment was favorable for the arrival of the first proto-nucleotides: from underground deposits of methanehydrate [1] and phosphate, with the support of all known pre-biotic physical-chemical conditions, were made the monomeric components of nucleic acids. The cradle of nucleic acids does not seem to have been so fundamentally aqueous, but organic. In fact, thinking back that “all the major biopolymers are metastable in aqueous solution” [2], it is easy to conclude that in those days a proto-nucleotide, or better its carbohydrate, in the aqueous phase would have shown all its inadequacy. However, knowing how today is made a nucleic acid, it is evident that the fine evolutionary strategy has distinguished, for this event, two necessities and consequently has chosen two evolutionary times and two different environments to achieve them: