625759 external_news 1567789499 1568065944 A recent study shows that cyanide and urea-based solvents could have played a role in making phosphate available for the origins of life on the early Earth. Phosphate is essential for life, and is used in the backbones of molecules like DNA. However, the availability of phosphate early in Earth’s history is thought to have been low because it would have been sequestered in insoluble calcium and iron minerals. Published in Angewandte Chemie, the work was carried out by Bradley Burcar, Alma Castañeda, Jennifer Lago, Mischael Daniels, Matthew Pasek, Nicholas Hud, Thomas Orlando, and Cesar Menor-Salvan in the NASA/NSF Center for Chemical Evolution and the Georgia Tech School of Chemistry and Biochemistry.

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