From the RNA-Peptide World: Prebiotic Reaction Conditions Compatible with Lipid Membranes for the Formation of Lipophilic Random Peptides in the Presence of Short Oligonucleotides, and More.

Deciphering the origins of life on a molecular level includes unravelling the numerous interactions that could occur between the most important biomolecules being the lipids, peptides and nucleotides. They were likely all present on the early Earth and all necessary for the emergence of cellular life. In this study, we intended to explore conditions that were at the same time conducive to chemical reactions critical for the origins of life (peptide-oligonucleotide couplings and templated ligation of oligonucleotides) and compatible with the presence of prebiotic lipid vesicles.

The Chemical Likelihood of Ribonucleotide-α-Amino acid Copolymers as Players for Early Stages of Evolution.

How ribosomal translation could have evolved remains an open question in most available scenarios for the early developments of life. Rather than considering RNA and peptides as two independent systems, this work is aimed at assessing the possibility of formation and stability of co-polymers or co-oligomers of α-amino acids and nucleotides from which translation might have evolved. Here we show that the linkages required to build such mixed structures have lifetimes of several weeks to months at neutral pH and 20 °C owing to the mutual protecting effect of both neighboring phosphoramidate and ester functional groups increasing their stability by factors of about 1 and 3 orders of magnitude, respectively.

The Prebiotic C-Terminal Elongation of Peptides Can Be Initiated by N-Carbamoyl Amino Acids.

The formation of peptides upon 1-ethyl-3-(3-dimethylaminopropyl)carbodiimide (EDC)-promoted activation of N-carbamoylamino acids (CAA), was considered in the scope of our recent works on carbodiimide promoted C-terminus elongation of peptides in a prebiotic context. Thus EDC promoted activation of CAA derivatives of Tyr(Me) or Ala in dilute aqueous medium pH 5.5-6.