ArticleGenes2011
Functional capabilities of the earliest peptides and the emergence of life.
Article in Genes, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 27 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
27 citing papers in PubMed.
- Phase separation of a heterochiral peptide-drug conjugate amplified by ionic interactions.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Coenzyme-protein interactions since early life.eLife · 2025Article
- Article
- Peptides En Route from Prebiotic to Biotic Catalysis.Accounts of chemical research · 2024Article
- Primitive purine biosynthesis connects ancient geochemistry to modern metabolism.Nature ecology & evolution · 2024Article
- Alzheimer's Disease: A Molecular Model and Implied Path to Improved Therapy.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Review
- Early Selection of the Amino Acid Alphabet Was Adaptively Shaped by Biophysical Constraints of Foldability.Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2023Article
- A self-sustaining serpentinization mega-engine feeds the fougerite nanoengines implicated in the emergence of guided metabolism.Frontiers in microbiology · 2023Article
- On the evolution of protein-adenine binding.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
- Protein three-dimensional structures at the origin of life.Interface focus · 2019Review
- On the beneficent thickness of water.Interface focus · 2019Review
- Fougerite: the not so simple progenitor of the first cells.Interface focus · 2019Review
- Reduced alphabet of prebiotic amino acids optimally encodes the conformational space of diverse extant protein folds.BMC evolutionary biology · 2019Article
- Green Rust: The Simple Organizing 'Seed' of All Life?Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2018Review
- Nanomedicine and Phage Capsids.Viruses · 2018Review
- Acetyl Phosphate as a Primordial Energy Currency at the Origin of Life.Origins of life and evolution of the biosphere : the journal of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life · 2018Article
- In the Beginning was a Mutualism - On the Origin of Translation.Origins of life and evolution of the biosphere : the journal of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life · 2018Article
- Resurrecting the Dead (Molecules).Computational and structural biotechnology journal · 2017Review
- Reversible Oxygenation of 2,4-Diaminobutanoic Acid-Co(II) Complexes.Bioinorganic chemistry and applications · 2016Article
- Energetics of Amino Acid Synthesis in Alkaline Hydrothermal Environments.Origins of life and evolution of the biosphere : the journal of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life · 2015Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Considering how biological macromolecules first evolved, probably within a marine environment, it seems likely the very earliest peptides were not encoded by nucleic acids, or at least not via the genetic code as we know it. An objective of the present work is to demonstrate that sequence-independent peptides, or peptides with variable and unreliable lengths and sequences, have the potential to perform a variety of chemically useful functions such as anion and cation binding and membrane and channel formation as well as simple types of catalysis. These functions tend to be performed with the assistance of the main chain CONH atoms rather than the more variable or limited side chain atoms of the peptides presumed to exist then.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.