ReviewNature reviews. Chemistry2024
On the aqueous origins of the condensation polymers of life.
Review in Nature reviews. Chemistry, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 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
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Prebiotically Plausible Synthesis of N-Cyanoimidazole for Phosphate Activation and Templated RNA Ligation.Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2026Article
- Abiotic synthesis of RNase-resistant phosphodiester and pyrophosphate-linked polymers via thermodynamically controlled wet-dry cycling.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Redox chemistry of early Earth and the origin of life.Communications chemistry · 2026Review
- Transient formation of supramolecular complexes between hyaluronan and oligopeptides at submicromolar concentration.Communications chemistry · 2026Article
- High-Yield Prebiotic Polymerization of 2',3'-Cyclic Nucleotides under Wet-Dry Cycling.ACS central science · 2025Article
- The power of triplets.Nature reviews. Chemistry · 2025Article
- Metabolic Dynamics and Sensory Impacts of Aging on Peony Mead: Insights into Nonenzymatic Reactions.Foods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Selection-diversification interplay in oligonucleotide chemical evolution.Biophysics and physicobiology · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Water is essential for life as we know it, but it has paradoxically been considered inimical to the emergence of life. Proteins and nucleic acids have sustained evolution and life for billions of years, but both are condensation polymers, suggesting that their formation requires the elimination of water. This presents intrinsic challenges at the origins of life, including how condensation polymer synthesis can overcome the thermodynamic pressure of hydrolysis in water and how nucleophiles can kinetically outcompete water to yield condensation products. The answers to these questions lie in balancing thermodynamic activation and kinetic stability. For peptides, an effective strategy is to directly harness the energy trapped in prebiotic molecules, such as nitriles, and avoid the formation of fully hydrolysed monomers. In this Review, we discuss how chemical energy can be built into precursors, retained, and released selectively for polymer synthesis. Looking to the future, the outstanding goals include how nucleic acids can be synthesized, avoiding the formation of fully hydrolysed monomers and what caused information to flow from nucleic acids to proteins.
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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.