ArticleNature chemistry2022
Cyanide as a primordial reductant enables a protometabolic reductive glyoxylate pathway.
Article in Nature chemistry, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed, 46 citations in OpenAlex.
- Strands in a Web: Free Energies of Select Prebiotic Reactions with Sugars, Nitriles and Azoles.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Mineral-facilitated aqueous synthesis of hydrogen cyanide from prebiotically abundant amino acids for chemical evolution.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- 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
- Abiotic origin of the citric acid cycle intermediates.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Computation-aided designs enable developing auxotrophic metabolic sensors for wide-range glyoxylate and glycolate detection.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Regulation of mammalian cellular metabolism by endogenous cyanide production.Nature metabolism · 2025Article
- Prebiotic formation of thioesters via cyclic anhydrides as a key step in the emergence of metabolism.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Nonenzymatic Hydration of Phosphoenolpyruvate: General Conditions for Hydration in Protometabolism by Searching Across Pathways.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2025Article
- Pinpointing Conditions for a Metabolic Origin of Life: Underlying Mechanisms and the Role of Coenzymes.Accounts of chemical research · 2024Article
- Mass Spectrometric Analysis of Purine Intermediary Metabolism Indicates Cyanide Induces Purine Catabolism in Rabbits.Metabolites · 2024Article
- Article
- Autocatalytic Selection as a Driver for the Origin of Life.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Primitive purine biosynthesis connects ancient geochemistry to modern metabolism.Nature ecology & evolution · 2024Article
- The protometabolic nature of prebiotic chemistry.Chemical Society reviews · 2023Review
- Carbonyl Migration in Uronates Affords a Potential Prebiotic Pathway for Pentose Production.JACS Au · 2023Article
- Environmental Stability and Its Importance for the Emergence of Darwinian Evolution.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Redox-Controlled Shunts in a Synthetic Chemical Reaction Cycle.Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2023Article
- Regulation and function of the mammalian tricarboxylic acid cycle.The Journal of biological chemistry · 2023Review
- Hydrogen Drives Part of the Reverse Krebs Cycle under Metal or Meteorite Catalysis.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2022Article
- Quantifying Reductive Amination in Nonenzymatic Amino Acid Synthesis.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Investigation of prebiotic metabolic pathways is predominantly based on abiotically replicating the reductive citric acid cycle. While attractive from a parsimony point of view, attempts using metal/mineral-mediated reductions have produced complex mixtures with inefficient and uncontrolled reactions. Here we show that cyanide acts as a mild and efficient reducing agent mediating abiotic transformations of tricarboxylic acid intermediates and derivatives. The hydrolysis of the cyanide adducts followed by their decarboxylation enables the reduction of oxaloacetate to malate and of fumarate to succinate, whereas pyruvate and α-ketoglutarate themselves are not reduced. In the presence of glyoxylate, malonate and malononitrile, alternative pathways emerge that bypass the challenging reductive carboxylation steps to produce metabolic intermediates and compounds found in meteorites. These results suggest a simpler prebiotic forerunner of today's metabolism, involving a reductive glyoxylate pathway without oxaloacetate and α-ketoglutarate-implying that the extant metabolic reductive carboxylation chemistries are an evolutionary invention mediated by complex metalloproteins.
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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.