For the new study, the researchers ran experiments with real minerals, including borate crusts collected at Puga. The results showed that ribose helps borate minerals dissolve and inhibits the formation of solid grains. More boron stays in the water, available for chemical reactions.

This creates what the authors describe as a two-way relationship: borate protects ribose from breakdown, and ribose keeps borate dissolved and mobile. It is a self-reinforcing loop in which each partner secures the other's survival.

A sky full of sugar

Four billion years ago, when life is thought to have first formed, Earth looked nothing like today. The atmosphere held little oxygen, volcanism was far more active, and green, iron-rich oceans covered sparse volcanic landscapes. Meteorites from the young solar system bombarded the land, delivering water and carbon compounds from space.

Researchers estimate that around a million tons of carbon could have arrived each year during this early bombardment. The Murchison meteorite, which fell in Victoria, Australia, in 1969, hints at what that material contained. Locals who collected its fragments reported a strong kerosene-like smell from its carbon-containing compounds. Scientists have since identified ribose among its contents, alongside other sugars.

With no microbes around to consume them, these molecules could accumulate wherever supply outpaced chemical breakdown. Evaporation in shallow lakes and pools may have concentrated them into rich chemical soups.

The soup shapes the rocks

Much origin-of-life research asks how minerals helped primordial chemistry become more complex. This study flips the perspective: the soup itself affected the minerals. Some boron that would otherwise have crystallized into crusts and been buried could have stayed dissolved in primordial waters, potentially changing which minerals formed at Earth's surface.

The findings come with clear limits. Ribose itself was probably rare on early Earth. The experiments focused on a single sugar, and other molecules that also bind borate — such as ethylene glycol and glycerol — still need testing against natural mineral deposits. More abundant rock components, including silica and calcium, also interact with carbon molecules, suggesting primordial soups could have influenced other mineral formations too.

Still, the implication is intriguing. Today, organisms shape geology by building shells and coral skeletons through biomineralization. The authors propose that nonliving carbon molecules may have begun influencing mineral formation even before life existed.

Whether these interactions reshaped entire landscapes remains an open question. But studying them, the researchers argue, helps scientists test assumptions about an alien world in our own distant past, refine origin-of-life experiments, and better understand where else in the universe life might emerge.

Publication details: Luke H. Steller et al., "The influence of ribose on borate mineral solubility," Scientific Reports (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-026-70700-5