How Prebiotic Chemistry and Early Life Chose Phosphate

The Origin and Early Evolution of Life: Prebiotic Chemistry, the Pre-RNA World, and Time

Antonio Lazcano* and Stanley L. Miller† models incorporate high partial pressures of CO2 to raise the temperature of the Earth by a greenhouse effect *Departamento de Biologı́a Facultad de Ciencias and thus prevent the complete freezing of the oceans (Kasting, 1993). However, a frozen Earth has some adUniversidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico Apartado Postal 70-407 vantages for prebiotic chemistry...

Why nature chose phosphate to modify proteins.

The advantageous chemical properties of the phosphate ester linkage were exploited early in evolution to generate the phosphate diester linkages that join neighbouring bases in RNA and DNA (Westheimer 1987 Science 235, 1173-1178). Following the fixation of the genetic code, another use for phosphate ester modification was found, namely reversible phosphorylation of the three hydroxyamino acids,...

Prebiotic chemistry themed issue

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....

Prebiotic Chemistry: Geochemical Context and Reaction Screening

The origin of life on Earth is widely believed to have required the reactions of organic compounds and their self- and/or environmental organization. What those compounds were remains open to debate, as do the environment in and process or processes by which they became organized. Prebiotic chemistry is the systematic organized study of these phenomena. It is difficult to study poorly defined p...