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Chemical reconstitution of the triose glycolysis pathway is controlled by α-phosphorylation and provides a generational link between prebiotic ribonucleotide synthesis, triose glycolysis and serine metabolism. Now, research suggests that unification of nucleotide synthesis and triose metabolism may have been a fundamentally important step towards the origins of life.

Aminoacyl-thiols reacting selectively with RNA diols over amine nucleophiles and demonstration of chemically controlled formation of peptidyl-RNA in water at neutral pH suggest an important role for thiol cofactors before the evolution of enzymes.

An RNA aptamer and a ribozyme are both observed to retain a surprising degree of activity despite backbone heterogeneity caused by the presence of non-natural 2′–5′ phosphodiester linkages. These results suggest that absolute regioselectivity of non-enzymatic replication may not have been required for the emergence of RNA as the first biopolymer.

2-aminothiazole — a hybrid of prebiotic amino acid and nucleotide precursors — sequentially accumulates and purifies glycolaldehyde and glyceraldehyde from complex mixtures in the order required for ribonucleotide synthesis, dynamically resolves glyceraldehyde from its ketose-isomer dihydroxyacetone, and provides the first strategy to select natural amino acids from abiotic aldehydes and ketones.

RNA and proteins are two crucial players in the origin of life but while RNA evolved to assemble proteins from amino acids, a significant mirror-symmetric effect of amino acids to trigger the synthesis of RNA was missing. Here, the authors report ambient alkaline conditions where amino acids, without additional chemical activators, promote RNA copolymerisation more than 100-fold, starting from prebiotically plausible ribonucleoside-2′,3′-cyclic phosphates.

Nucleotides are essential to the origins of life, and their synthesis is a key challenge for prebiotic chemistry. Contrary to prior expectation, non-canonical 3′-amino-TNA nucleosides are shown to be synthesized diastereoselectively and regiospecifically under prebiotically plausible conditions. The enhanced reactivity of 3′-amino-TNAs also promotes their selective non-enzymatic triphosphorylation in water.

While mechanisms have been proposed for the prebiotic nucleotide synthesis, these require separate (and potentially incompatible) routes for pyrimidines and purines. Here the authors show that both of these classes of molecules can be formed by a divergent synthesis from a common prebiotic precursor.

Arabinonucleic acid (ANA) Watson-Crick base-pair with RNA/DNA and can evolve to display enzyme-like function. Here, the authors now identify a prebiotic pathway that yields the complete set of Watson-Crick base-pairing purine and pyrimidine ANA nucleosides.

How the first metabolic network was organized to power a cell remains an enigma. Now, simple iron–sulfur peptides have been used to generate a pH-gradient across a protocell membrane by catalysing hydrogen peroxide reduction. This indicates that short peptides could have fulfilled the role of redox active metalloproteins in early life.

At some stage in the origin of life, an information-carrying polymer must have formed by purely chemical means. That polymer might have been RNA, but until now this theory has been hampered by a lack of evidence for a plausible route in which the ribonucleotides could have formed on prebiotic Earth. Here, just such a route is reported.

The Strecker reaction is thought to offer a prebiotically plausible synthesis of amino acids, but is reversible at the high or low pH ranges needed to promote reactivity. Here the reaction of hydrogen cyanide and diamidophosphate is shown to provide stable phosphorylated amino acid precursors at neutral pH, which can be hydrolysed to amino acids or thiolysed to thioamides.

One theory for the abiogenesis of RNA involves ligation of shorter oligomers that are observed after dry-state condensation of mononucleotides. Here, the chemo- and regioselective acetylation of (oligo)nucleotides in water under prebiotically plausible conditions is described. This remarkable selectivity permits the rapid template-directed ligation of oligomers to favour extant 3′,5′-linkages.

Prebiotic peptide formation is achieved through chemoselective, high-yielding ligation of α-aminonitriles in water, showing selectivity for α-peptide coupling and tolerance of all proteinogenic amino acid residues.

Water is essential for life but paradoxically considered detrimental to the origins of life. Here, we discuss whether avoiding hydrolysed monomers and exploiting the chemical energy in prebiotic precursors may hold the missing key to unlocking biopolymer synthesis.

High concentrations of prebiotic molecules and dry–wet cycles are difficult to achieve in a submerged system. Now, it has been shown that temperature gradients across gas bubbles in submerged rock pores can provide these conditions. Molecules are continuously accumulated at the warm side of bubbles at the gas–water interface, which enables or enhances many prebiotically relevant processes.