Richard N. Zare

Strong Hydration and Salt Association Complicate Nucleotide Oligomer Analysis by Mass Spectrometry

The abiotic synthesis of nucleotide oligomers via wet–dry cycling may have provided a source of nucleic acids necessary for the origin of primitive forms of life. Mass spectrometry (MS) is an important analytical tool used to investigate such oligomers, but the products are surprisingly complex because of water molec...