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Origins of life: the molecules that could have unlocked peptide synthesis

For life to emerge on Earth, peptides must first have formed without the aid of enzymes — but how? Reactions of sulfur-containing molecules might have been key.
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  1. Arup Dalal

    1. Arup Dalal is at the Centre for Cellular, Computational and Integrative Biology, University of Trento, 38123 Trento, Italy.

  2. Sheref S. Mansy

    1. Sheref S. Mansy is at the Centre for Cellular, Computational and Integrative Biology, University of Trento, 38123 Trento, Italy.

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Tremendous progress in the field of prebiotic chemistry has shown how simple compounds available on ancient Earth could have given rise to the molecular building blocks of life1. The current challenge is to work out how these building blocks could have assembled into functional polymers, such as peptides and nucleic acids, in the absence of biological systems. Prebiotic peptide assembly from amino acids is particularly difficult to establish, given that the intricate biological machinery used today to synthesize peptides obscures the origins of the process. Writing in Nature, Singh et al.2 report chemistry that could plausibly have facilitated a key step of peptide synthesis during the prebiotic era.

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Nature 644, 878-879 (2025)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-02518-6

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Competing Interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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