Chemical origin of life articles within Nature Chemistry

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  • Thesis |

    In the second of two essays looking at organic chemistry that can be found in the Solar System, Bruce C. Gibb focuses on the gas and ice giants as well as their satellites — concluding the tour on Saturn's fascinating moon Titan.

    • Bruce C. Gibb

  • News & Views |

    The spontaneous syntheses of some of life's building blocks from simple precursors have previously been demonstrated in isolation. Now it has been shown that they might all emerge from just one set of ingredients.

    • Paul J. Bracher

  • News & Views |

    Replication of long nucleic acid sequences was required for the evolution of biological complexity during the origin of life; however, short sequences are normally better replicators than long ones. A common physical environment now provides a simple mechanism to reverse this trend and enables long sequences to flourish.

    • Irene A. Chen

  • Article |

    How complex nucleic acids originally formed, despite dilution and degradation reactions, is not clear. Thermal gradients in rock pores have now been shown to be capable of trapping and thermo-cycling genetic polymers during replication. In this system long oligonucleotide strands are seen to outcompete short strands — a prerequisite for the evolution of replicating systems towards increasing complexity.

    • Moritz Kreysing
    • , Lorenz Keil
    •  & Dieter Braun

  • News & Views |

    Molecular simulations have the potential to give valuable insights into experimental results, but can be limited by the time- and length-scales they can simulate. Now, reactive chemistry can be driven through a novel simulation approach, which could have ramifications for many research areas, including astrobiology and the origins of life.

    • Nir Goldman

  • Article |

    Computational chemistry is traditionally used to interpret experimental findings. Now its use in reaction discovery is described with the development of the ab initio nanoreactor — a highly accelerated, first-principles molecular dynamics simulation of chemical reactions that discovers new molecules and mechanisms without preordained reaction coordinates or elementary steps.

    • Lee-Ping Wang
    • , Alexey Titov
    •  & Todd J. Martínez

  • Perspective |

    RNA can carry information, self-replicate and catalyse reactions, and so is often included in scenarios for the origin of life, but was it the first self-replicator? This Perspective considers the question of whether simpler polymer structures could have encoded early life, and discusses how to seek them out.

    • Ashley Brewer
    •  & Anthony P. Davis

  • Article |

    A hybrid protocell model is described in which a fatty acid membrane spontaneously assembles on the surface of coacervate microdroplets with molecularly crowded interiors. The membrane-enclosed protocells exhibit uptake and exclusion properties that differ from the uncoated droplets. The internal structure can be disassembled at high ionic strength without loss of membrane integrity. This model may help to reconcile alternative mechanisms of prebiotic compartmentalization.

    • T-Y. Dora Tang
    • , C. Rohaida Che Hak
    •  & Stephen Mann

  • Article |

    Darwinian evolution involves competition between members of a population. Here, the synthesis of a hydrophobic dipeptide catalysed by a second dipeptide in a model protocell — a vesicle — is described. The reaction product partitions to the vesicle membrane, which grows by accumulating fatty acids derived from neighbouring vesicles. Thus, an encapsulated catalyst drives competition between the model protocells.

    • Katarzyna Adamala
    •  & Jack W. Szostak

  • Editorial |

    A collection of articles in this issue focuses on the chemical origin of life — how simple molecules present on the early Earth could have evolved into the complex dynamic biochemistry that we know today.

  • Interview |

    Matthew Powner from University College London talks with Nature Chemistry about his work on the chemical origin of life and how it has led him from PhD student to group leader.

  • News & Views |

    Non-enzymatic copying of an RNA template is appealing as a transition from pre-life to an RNA world, but it has been difficult to demonstrate in the laboratory. Now, two separate studies focusing on RNA's backbone connectivity offer partial solutions to some of the problems raised with this hypothesis for the origin of life.

    • Armando R. Hernández
    •  & Joseph A. Piccirilli

  • Article |

    An RNA aptamer and a ribozyme are both observed to retain a surprising degree of activity despite backbone heterogeneity caused by the presence of non-natural 2′–5′ phosphodiester linkages. These results suggest that absolute regioselectivity of non-enzymatic replication may not have been required for the emergence of RNA as the first biopolymer.

    • Aaron E. Engelhart
    • , Matthew W. Powner
    •  & Jack W. Szostak

  • Article |

    One theory for the abiogenesis of RNA involves ligation of shorter oligomers that are observed after dry-state condensation of mononucleotides. Here, the chemo- and regioselective acetylation of (oligo)nucleotides in water under prebiotically plausible conditions is described. This remarkable selectivity permits the rapid template-directed ligation of oligomers to favour extant 3′,5′-linkages.

    • Frank R. Bowler
    • , Christopher K. W. Chan
    •  & Jianfeng Xu

  • Article |

    The pre-RNA-world hypothesis postulates that RNA was preceded in the evolution of life by a simpler genetic material. Here, Darwinian evolution methods were used to generate a threose nucleic acid (TNA) aptamer. This result provides evidence that TNA could have served as an ancestral genetic system during an early stage of life.

    • Hanyang Yu
    • , Su Zhang
    •  & John C. Chaput

  • In Your Element |

    Oxygen has contributed to our understanding of the evolution of life on Earth by providing invaluable clues to geological processes — yet it still holds the key to some unsolved mysteries, as Mark H. Thiemens explains.

    • Mark H. Thiemens

  • Article |

    Membrane-enclosed reaction compartments are considered important for establishing plausible pathways of prebiotic organization. Here, simple mixing of mononucleotides and cationic peptides in water is shown to produce microdroplets that sequester photo-active molecules, catalytic nanoparticles and enzymes. Such droplets might provide plausible pathways of prebiotic organization prior to the emergence of membrane-based compartmentalization on the early Earth.

    • Shogo Koga
    • , David S. Williams
    •  & Stephen Mann

  • Article |

    The formation of simple prebiotic organic compounds on early Earth is thought to be an important step in the origin of life. Molecular dynamics simulations of the conditions within cometary ice during planetary impact suggest a possible mechanism for the formation of glycine, an amino acid.

    • Nir Goldman
    • , Evan J. Reed
    •  & Amitesh Maiti

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