Abstract
A long-standing, central problem in the research on the chemical evolution towards the origin of life is the so-called “water paradox”: Despite life depends on liquid water, key biochemical reactions such as nucleotide condensation are inhibited by it. Current hypotheses addressing this paradox have low prebiotic plausibility when taking the conservative nature of evolution into account. We report spontaneous, abiotic RNA synthesis in water driven by nanofluidic effects in temporal nanoconfinements of aqueous particle suspensions. Our findings provide a solution of the water paradox in a multifaceted way: abiotic, temporal nanofluidic environments allow prebiotic condensation reaction pathways in water under stable, moderate conditions, emerge in suspensions as a geologically ubiquitous and thus prebiotic highly plausible environment and are consistent with evolutionary conservatism as living cells also work with temporal nanoconfined water.
Chemical evolution and the origin of life
