Could TNA have been an RNA precursor in early life?

[Phobos]

Just heard about this...anyone have more familiarity/info? Does this provide any insight into abiogenesis?

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993972

You have heard of DNA and RNA, but what about TNA? It resembles its more famous cousins in almost every respect, except that it is based on a sugar called threose instead of the deoxyribose found in DNA and the ribose in RNA. Researchers have speculated that because threose is a simpler sugar than ribose, TNA could be a long-lost precursor to RNA.
… has shown that TNA can be assembled by natural enzymes.

 

[jim mcnamara]

Threose nucleic acid (TNA), glycol nucleic acid (GNA), and PNA, lack experimental evidence for their respective abiogenesis.