ArticleNature chemistry2022
Prebiotic synthesis of α-amino acids and orotate from α-ketoacids potentiates transition to extant metabolic pathways.
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 21 papers.
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21 citing papers in PubMed, 60 citations in OpenAlex.
- Functional abiotic metabolite assembly hypothesis for the early events in the origin of life.Nature communications · 2026Review
- Electrocatalytic and Photocatalytic C─N Coupling From Small Molecules.Advanced materials (Deerfield Beach, Fla.) · 2026Review
- Non-enzymatic coupling of protometabolic reactions with a prebiotic redox cofactor.Nature communications · 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
- Can the origin of biosynthetic routes be explained by a Frankenstein's monster-like spontaneous assembly of prebiotic reactants?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
- Harnessing prebiotic formamide chemistry: a novel platform for antiviral exploration.Scientific reports · 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
- Review
- Computation-aided designs enable developing auxotrophic metabolic sensors for wide-range glyoxylate and glycolate detection.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Nanostructural Modulation of G-Quadruplex DNA in Neurodegeneration: Orotate Interaction Revealed Through Experimental and Computational Approaches.Journal of neurochemistry · 2025Article
- On the Origin of Life on Earth: The Nanozymes Hypothesis, and More.Research (Washington, D.C.) · 2025Review
- A New Mechanism for Formation of Glycine from Glyoxylic Acid: the Aza-Cannizzaro Reaction.Chemistry (Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, Germany) · 2024Article
- Spontaneous Peptide Ligation Mediated by Cysteamine.JACS Au · 2024Article
- The protometabolic nature of prebiotic chemistry.Chemical Society reviews · 2023Review
- C2-addition patterns emerging from acetylene and nickel sulfide in simulated prebiotic hydrothermal conditions.Communications chemistry · 2023Article
- Carbonyl Migration in Uronates Affords a Potential Prebiotic Pathway for Pentose Production.JACS Au · 2023Article
- On the origin of life: an RNA-focused synthesis and narrative.RNA (New York, N.Y.) · 2023Article
- Prebiotic Synthesis ofJournal of the American Chemical Society · 2023Article
- Prebiotic Synthesis of Aspartate Using Life's Metabolism as a Guide.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The Strecker reaction of aldehydes is the pre-eminent pathway to explain the prebiotic origins of α-amino acids. However, biology employs transamination of α-ketoacids to synthesize amino acids which are then transformed to nucleobases, implying an evolutionary switch-abiotically or biotically-of a prebiotic pathway involving the Strecker reaction into today's biosynthetic pathways. Here we show that α-ketoacids react with cyanide and ammonia sources to form the corresponding α-amino acids through the Bucherer-Bergs pathway. An efficient prebiotic transformation of oxaloacetate to aspartate via N-carbamoyl aspartate enables the simultaneous formation of dihydroorotate, paralleling the biochemical synthesis of orotate as the precursor to pyrimidine nucleobases. Glyoxylate forms both glycine and orotate and reacts with malonate and urea to form aspartate and dihydroorotate. These results, along with the previously demonstrated protometabolic analogues of the Krebs cycle, suggest that there can be a natural emergence of congruent forerunners of biological pathways with the potential for seamless transition from prebiotic chemistry to modern metabolism.
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