Comment by HarHarVeryFunny
6 days ago
It's a sample of one, but I think the takeaway is just that if the nucleobases are present on a random asteroid then they probably commonly occur. Of course as you note it takes a lot more than that to form these into nucleic acids.
I would guess there is a more primitive stage in the emergence of life where self-replicating soups (Kaufmann: metabolisms), including things like nucleobases and amino acids, capable of collective replication/expansion exist, before we get anything as sophisticated as nucleic acids and structural encoding.
The nucleobases can self polymerize into nucleic acids
Since nucleobases contain neither sugars nor phosphates, no they can't.
Nucleotides*
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