ArticleAngewandte Chemie (International ed. in English)2015
Ester-Mediated Amide Bond Formation Driven by Wet-Dry Cycles: A Possible Path to Polypeptides on the Prebiotic Earth.
Article in Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English), 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 141 papers.
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Who cites it
141 citing papers in PubMed, 321 citations in OpenAlex.
- Serine Octamer Substitution Reactions With α-Hydroxy Acids.Rapid communications in mass spectrometry : RCM · 2026Article
- From searching for extraterrestrial biosignatures to exploring the origins of life: A prebiotic chemistry perspective.Fundamental research · 2026Review
- Emergence of biosignatures on Earth and implications for life detection.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Hydroxy acid conjugation to lipids increases structural and hydrolytic stability.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Abiotic synthesis of RNase-resistant phosphodiester and pyrophosphate-linked polymers via thermodynamically controlled wet-dry cycling.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- The master molecule that built biology: How water shaped the chemistry of life.Protein science : a publication of the Protein Society · 2026Review
- Experimental and Computational Simulation of the Prebiotic Peptide Bond Formation Driven by Wet-Dry Cycles and Gamma Ionizing Radiation: An Insight into Molecular Evolution.Journal of molecular evolution · 2026Article
- Stringent selection on kinetics of condensation reactions: early steps in chemical evolution.Physical chemistry chemical physics : PCCP · 2026Article
- The Exceptional Solubility of Cyclic Trimetaphosphate in the Presence of MgLife (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Metal-ion mediated photolytic regulation of diphenylalanine stability: Implications for prebiotic chemical evolution.iScience · 2026Article
- Depsipeptide Analogues of Gly-Ala-Gly: Proton Localization and Effects on Collision-Induced Dissociation.Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry · 2026Article
- The Origin of Life and Cellular Systems: A Continuum from Prebiotic Chemistry to Biodiversity.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Prebiotically Plausible Peptides can Self-assemble into β-rich Nanostructures.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Sample Preparation for MALDI-TOF Mass Spectrometry of Model Prebiotic Reactions in Simulated Ocean World Environments.ACS omega · 2025Article
- Differential stability and dynamics of DNA-based and RNA-based coacervates affect non-enzymatic RNA chemistry.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Protopeptide backbone affects assembly in aqueous solutions.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- High-Yield Prebiotic Polymerization of 2',3'-Cyclic Nucleotides under Wet-Dry Cycling.ACS central science · 2025Article
- Developing a Mass Spectrometry-Based Research and Teaching Program at a Primarily Undergraduate Institution.Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry · 2025Review
- From Amino Acids to α-Keto Acids via β-Elimination and Transamination Initiates a Pathway to Prebiotic Reaction Networks.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2025Article
- Protein Catalysis Through Structural Dynamics: A Comprehensive Analysis of Energy Conversion in Enzymatic Systems and Its Computational Limitations.Pharmaceuticals (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
81 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Although it is generally accepted that amino acids were present on the prebiotic Earth, the mechanism by which α-amino acids were condensed into polypeptides before the emergence of enzymes remains unsolved. Here, we demonstrate a prebiotically plausible mechanism for peptide (amide) bond formation that is enabled by α-hydroxy acids, which were likely present along with amino acids on the early Earth. Together, α-hydroxy acids and α-amino acids form depsipeptides-oligomers with a combination of ester and amide linkages-in model prebiotic reactions that are driven by wet-cool/dry-hot cycles. Through a combination of ester-amide bond exchange and ester bond hydrolysis, depsipeptides are enriched with amino acids over time. These results support a long-standing hypothesis that peptides might have arisen from ester-based precursors.
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