Non-enzymatic transfer of sequence information under plausible prebiotic conditions

► Anaerobic dry/wet cycles simulate prebiotic conditions. ► Nucleoside monophosphates polymerize under these conditions. ► Heat provides activation energy. ► The presence of lipids in the medium enhances the reaction yield by 74%. ► Nucleic acids replicate under these conditions with 0.5% yield and 9.9% error rate.