Recently, Zare and co-workers demonstrated that D-ribose can be phosphorylated to ribose-1-phosphate and subsequently transformed to uridine in the presence of phosphoric acid and uracil in aqueous microdroplets (cf. Figure ). The same conditions were shown to enable the formation of other sugar phosphates, as well as other purine and pyrimidine nucleosides. The experimental conditions strongly suggest the assistance of oriented external electric fields (OEEFs), as the intrinsic electric field of aqueous microdroplets had to be complemented with an externally applied voltage to observe maximal catalysis.