Fluctuating nanofluid environments induce prebiotic RNA formation in water

Abstract

A long-standing, crucial problem in the research on the chemical evolution towards the origin of life is the so-called ‘water paradox’. It states that although water is essential to life, key chemical reactions such as the synthesis of RNA are inhibited by it. Current hypotheses addressing this paradox have low prebiotic plausibility when taking the conservative nature of evolution into account. Here, we report spontaneous abiotic RNA formation in aqueous environments. The synthesis is driven by nanofluid phenomena that alter critical properties of water. Our findings provide a solution to the paradox in a multifaceted way: abiotic, temporal nanofluid confinements allow prebiotic condensation reaction pathways in water under stable, moderate conditions, emerge in aqueous particle suspensions of varied composition as a geologically ubiquitous and thus prebiotic highly plausible environment, and are consistent with the principle that evolution builds on existing pathways, as living cells also work with temporal nanoconfined water.