ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2022
Aqueous microdroplets enable abiotic synthesis and chain extension of unique peptide isomers from free amino acids.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 58 papers.
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58 citing papers in PubMed, 133 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Measuring the Dynamic Nanometric Contact Radius of a Single Microdroplet on an Electrified Microinterface.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2026Article
- Electric fields at hydrophobic water interfaces: spectroscopic evidence, physical origin, and implications on reactivity.Chemical Society reviews · 2026Review
- Depsipeptide Analogues of Gly-Ala-Gly: Proton Localization and Effects on Collision-Induced Dissociation.Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry · 2026Article
- Atmospheric Sampling Mass Spectrometers Activate and Ionize Neutral Water Microdroplets to MeV Energies and up to 200,000+ Charges: Implications for Water Stability and Unusual Chemistry in Microdroplets.ACS central science · 2025Article
- Ester Formation in Alcohol Microdroplet Sprays: Enhanced Reactivity of CThe journal of physical chemistry. A · 2025Article
- Distinct Oligomerization of Lactic Acid in Aqueous Microdroplets.The journal of physical chemistry. A · 2025Article
- Chemoselective cyclodesulfurizationChemical science · 2025Article
- Mechanisms of ionization and of chemical reactions in charged microdroplets.Chemical science · 2025Review
- Size Dependent Uncatalyzed Sulfite Oxidation in Aqueous Microdroplets.Environmental science & technology · 2025Article
- An Alternative Explanation for Ions Put Forth as Evidence for Abundant Hydroxyl Radicals Formed Due to the Intrinsic Electric Field at the Surface of Water Droplets.Analytical chemistry · 2025Article
- Nitrogen fixation using metallic lithium nanoparticles formed by electrospray deposition.Chemical science · 2025Article
- Multiphase Electrochemiluminescence of Microdroplets and Radical Salts.Accounts of chemical research · 2025Article
- Isomers and band assignments in the cryogenic vibrational spectrum of the binary complex between water and protonated formic acid using two color, IR-IR photobleaching and H/D isotopic substitution.The Journal of chemical physics · 2025Article
- Real-Time Visualization of an Elusive, Strong Reducing Agent during Tris(2,2'-bipyridyl)ruthenium(II) Electro-Oxidation in Water.Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2025Article
- Serine Octamer Clusters Direct the Chirality of Peptides Formed in Water Microdroplets.The journal of physical chemistry. A · 2025Article
- Interfacial electromigration for accelerated reactions.Analytica chimica acta · 2025Article
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3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
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Abstract
Amide bond formation, the essential condensation reaction underlying peptide synthesis, is hindered in aqueous systems by the thermodynamic constraints associated with dehydration. This represents a key difficulty for the widely held view that prebiotic chemical evolution leading to the formation of the first biomolecules occurred in an oceanic environment. Recent evidence for the acceleration of chemical reactions at droplet interfaces led us to explore aqueous amino acid droplet chemistry. We report the formation of dipeptide isomer ions from free glycine or L-alanine at the air-water interface of aqueous microdroplets emanating from a single spray source (with or without applied potential) during their flight toward the inlet of a mass spectrometer. The proposed isomeric dipeptide ion is an oxazolidinone that takes fully covalent and ion-neutral complex forms. This structure is consistent with observed fragmentation patterns and its conversion to authentic dipeptide ions upon gentle collisions and for its formation from authentic dipeptides at ultra-low concentrations. It also rationalizes the results of droplet fusion experiments that show that the dipeptide isomer facilitates additional amide bond formation events, yielding authentic tri- through hexapeptides. We propose that the interface of aqueous microdroplets serves as a drying surface that shifts the equilibrium between free amino acids in favor of dehydration via stabilization of the dipeptide isomers. These findings offer a possible solution to the water paradox of biopolymer synthesis in prebiotic chemistry.
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