Did minerals perform prebiotic combinatorial chemistry?

PREBIOTIC CHEMISTRY Borate Minerals and Origin of the RNAWorld

The RNA World is generally thought to have been an important link between purely prebiotic (>3.7 Ga) chemistry and modern DNA/protein biochemistry. One concern about the RNAWorld hypothesis is the geochemical stability of ribose, the sugar moiety of RNA. Prebiotic stabilization of ribose by solutions associated with borate minerals, notably colemanite, ulexite, and kernite, has been proposed as...

Prebiotic chemistry themed issue

How did prebiotic polymers become informational foldamers?

A mystery about the origins of life is which molecular structures – and what spontaneous processes – drove the autocatalytic transition from simple chemistry to biology? Using the HP lattice model of polymer sequence spaces leads to the prediction that random sequences of hydrophobic (H) and polar (P ) monomers can collapse into relatively compact structures, exposing hydrophobic surfaces, acti...

The Future of Prebiotic Chemistry

Here is a puzzle: in what area of organic synthesis research are synthetic organic chemists a minority? According to Albert Eschenmoser, it is in the field of prebiotic chemistry: the study of the reactions and molecules that led to the emergence of life on earth. Biologists, mathematicians, and astronomers have traditionally weighed in on this problem proportionally more than organic chemists....

Combinatorial chemistry

Combinatorial chemistry, which did not even exist fifteen years ago, is a new subfield of chemistry that is starting to provide insights into molecular interactions, biochemical catalysis and drug development. Instead of finding and testing naturally existing compounds for useful activity, the basic aim of combinatorial chemistry studies is to create vast numbers of new, synthetic compounds and...