ArticleNature chemistry2020
Emergence of light-driven protometabolism on recruitment of a photocatalytic cofactor by a self-replicator.
Article in Nature chemistry, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 34 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.
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Who cites it
34 citing papers in PubMed.
- Restoring intracellular homeostasis disrupted by synthetic nanoassemblies.Nature chemical biology · 2026Article
- Temporal dependence emerges from a carbodiimide driven acid-anhydride equilibrium coupled to a photocatalytic decarboxylation reaction.Chemical science · 2026Article
- Shedding Light on Synthetic Autocatalysis: From Conventional Closed-Shell Chemistries to Overlooked Open-Shell Occurrences.Chemistry (Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, Germany) · 2026Review
- Wavelength-dependent feedback behavior in light-gated polymersome nanoreactors.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Out-of-Equilibrium Supramolecular Assembly Sustained by Photocatalysis.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2026Article
- Light-Driven Competitive Selection in a Protein-Catalyzed Dissipative Peptide Replication.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2026Article
- Building Molecules by a Self-Replicator That Catalyzes Acyl Hydrazone Formation.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2026Article
- Information propagation through enzyme-free catalytic templating of DNA dimerization with weak product inhibition.Nature chemistry · 2025Article
- Redox-driven photoselective self-assembly.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Article
- Metabolism-inspired chemical reaction networks for chemically driven dissipative oligoesterification.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2025Article
- Competitive exclusion among self-replicating molecules curtails the tendency of chemistry to diversify.Nature chemistry · 2025Article
- Light-Mediated Interconversion between a Foldamer and a Self-Replicator.Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2024Article
- Cell-Like Synthetic Supramolecular Soft Materials Realized in Multicomponent, Non-/Out-of-Equilibrium Dynamic Systems.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2024Article
- Evolution at the Origins of Life?Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- Theoretical perspective on synthetic man-made life: Learning from the origin of life.Quantitative biology (Beijing, China) · 2023Review
- The protometabolic nature of prebiotic chemistry.Chemical Society reviews · 2023Review
- Enantioselective Self-Replicators.Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2023Article
- Light-Fueled Primitive Replication and Selection in Biomimetic Chemical Systems.Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2023Article
- Photoswitchable gating of non-equilibrium enzymatic feedback in chemically communicating polymersome nanoreactors.Nature chemistry · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Establishing how life can emerge from inanimate matter is among the grand challenges of contemporary science. Chemical systems that capture life's essential characteristics-replication, metabolism and compartmentalization-offer a route to understanding this momentous process. The synthesis of life, whether based on canonical biomolecules or fully synthetic molecules, requires the functional integration of these three characteristics. Here we show how a system of fully synthetic self-replicating molecules, on recruiting a cofactor, acquires the ability to transform thiols in its environment into disulfide precursors from which the molecules can replicate. The binding of replicator and cofactor enhances the activity of the latter in oxidizing thiols into disulfides through photoredox catalysis and thereby accelerates replication by increasing the availability of the disulfide precursors. This positive feedback marks the emergence of light-driven protometabolism in a system that bears no resemblance to canonical biochemistry and constitutes a major step towards the highly challenging aim of creating a new and completely synthetic form of life.
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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.