Life in the RNA World would also need tactics to survive when under attack. If an early RNA life form was injured, resulting in loss of some of its structure, what would be a better danger signal to the organism than one of its own degradation products? The major degradation product of nucleic acids is uric acid. As we shall see, recent studies suggest uric acid functions as a major alarm signal of the organism, telling it that the nucleic acids that drive all cell functions are under attack. Like ATP, uric acid likely represents a carryover from the RNA world and may have a survival role that
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