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PREBIOTIC CHEMISTRY

From soup to peptides

Nature Chemistry volume 11, pages 763–764 (2019)Cite this article

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Proteins are biosynthesized from α-amino acids using hefty biological machinery, but the origin of this process on the early Earth is unclear. Now, a bottom-up approach for forming peptides, taking place under mild, prebiotically-plausible conditions, has been developed. This strategy uses α-aminonitrile precursors, bypassing α-amino acids entirely.

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Fig. 1: Gentle, prebiotically plausible peptide ligation using α-aminonitriles.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire de Physique des Interactions Ioniques et Moléculaires, Centre de Saint Jérôme, Aix-Marseille Université, Marseille, France

    Robert Pascal

  2. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA

    Irene A. Chen

  3. Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

    Irene A. Chen

Authors
  1. Robert Pascal
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  2. Irene A. Chen
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Correspondence to Robert Pascal or Irene A. Chen.

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Pascal, R., Chen, I.A. From soup to peptides. Nat. Chem. 11, 763–764 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-019-0318-6

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