ArticleNature chemistry2020
A plausible metal-free ancestral analogue of the Krebs cycle composed entirely of α-ketoacids.
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 56 papers.
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56 citing papers in PubMed, 117 citations in OpenAlex.
- Non-enzymatic coupling of protometabolic reactions with a prebiotic redox cofactor.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Metallic molybdenum sulfide catalyses protometabolic carbon dioxide reaction networks under extreme conditions.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Influence of Rare Earth Elements on Prebiotic Reaction Networks Resembling the Biologically Relevant Krebs Cycle.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2026Article
- Entropy-Driven Amino Acid-Based Coacervates with Enzyme-Free Metabolism and Prebiotic Robustness.Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2025Article
- Magmatic immiscibility provides phosphate for prebiotic chemistry.Science advances · 2025Article
- Science of the gaps.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Before LUCA: unearthing the chemical roots of metabolism.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- 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
- Thermodynamic Constraints on the Citric Acid Cycle and Related Reactions in Ocean World Interiors.ACS earth & space chemistry · 2025Article
- Structural Enzymology, Phylogenetics, Differentiation, and Symbolic Reflexivity at the Dawn of Biology.Genome biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Abiotic origin of the citric acid cycle intermediates.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Prebiotic formation of thioesters via cyclic anhydrides as a key step in the emergence of metabolism.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Mass spectrometry imaging reveals spatial metabolic variation and the crucial role of uridine metabolism in liver injury caused by Schistosoma japonicum.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2025Article
- Nonenzymatic Hydration of Phosphoenolpyruvate: General Conditions for Hydration in Protometabolism by Searching Across Pathways.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2025Article
- Biomathematical enzyme kinetics model of prebiotic autocatalytic RNA networks: degenerating parasite-specific hyperparasite catalysts confer parasite resistance and herald the birth of molecular immunity.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- A New Mechanism for Formation of Glycine from Glyoxylic Acid: the Aza-Cannizzaro Reaction.Chemistry (Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, Germany) · 2024Article
- Article
- Pinpointing Conditions for a Metabolic Origin of Life: Underlying Mechanisms and the Role of Coenzymes.Accounts of chemical research · 2024Article
- Peptides En Route from Prebiotic to Biotic Catalysis.Accounts of chemical research · 2024Article
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4 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
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Abstract
Efforts to decipher the prebiotic roots of metabolic pathways have focused on recapitulating modern biological transformations, with metals typically serving in place of cofactors and enzymes. Here we show that the reaction of glyoxylate with pyruvate under mild aqueous conditions produces a series of α-ketoacid analogues of the reductive citric acid cycle without the need for metals or enzyme catalysts. The transformations proceed in the same sequence as the reverse Krebs cycle, resembling a protometabolic pathway, with glyoxylate acting as both the carbon source and reducing agent. Furthermore, the α-ketoacid analogues provide a natural route for the synthesis of amino acids by transamination with glycine, paralleling the extant metabolic mechanisms and obviating the need for metal-catalysed abiotic reductive aminations. This emerging sequence of prebiotic reactions could have set the stage for the advent of increasingly sophisticated pathways operating under catalytic control.
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