https://www.scripps.edu/news-and-events/press-room/2025/20250428-krishnamurthy-prebiotic-sugars.html
A recent study by Scripps Research proposes a credible pathway for the early formation and evolution of protocells, suggesting that phosphorylation might have been crucial in developing complex, functional precursors to life on Earth about 4 billion years ago. This discovery enhances our understanding of the origins of life and the early Earth’s chemical environment. Credit: SciTechDaily.com
New phospholipid discovery brings researchers closer to understanding how primordial cells emerged during origin of life. February 29, 2024
https://www.geneage.info/about.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sq-Kg1gZEj4
---------------
03/26/2022
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-021-00883-z
Study demonstrates a closely related set of chemical reactions that could have supported the development of early life forms.
And the reaction to chimeric RNA-DNA research from our lab continues, this time with an in-depth and thoughtful discussion by a Russian Science News Magazine called ELEMENTS.asking the question
Here is the Google Translated Web Page link
Reaction from Colorado University (Boulder) about RDNA chimeras .....
Read article in English translation
Newly described chemical reaction could have assembled DNA building blocks before life forms and their enzymes existed.
On the early Earth, a forerunner of the complex cycle of reactions that underpins metabolism in today’s cells might have originated from interactions between just two simple, versatile molecules in water, according to new research. Read more by John Rennie in Quantamagazine
Nuevas investigaciones
by Aaron Gronstal
Watch the video at around 34 minutes where the work from our laboratory at Scripps Research is featured.
Image credit: James McKay
Finding from Scripps Research and UK’s MRC weighs against popular “RNA World” hypothesis
April 01, 2019
More here .....
Prebiotic synthesis reveals that DNA nucleosides may form just as readily as RNA in the absence of enzymes, and therefore could have existed alongside RNA before the origin of life. Behind the paper By Nick Green
By Alfredo Carpineti
--------
NASA's new Prebiotic Chemistry and Early Earth Environments (PCE3) Consortium will identify planetary conditions that might give rise to life's chemistry. Credit Rensselaer
NASA is uniting experts across multiple disciplines to investigate life's beginnings on our planet -- and to explore if and how life sprung up elsewhere in the universe
Georgia Tech researchers have expanded the synthetic value of the common building block dihydroxyfumaric acid (DHF). The diester derivative of DHF has been used exclusively as an electron-seeking (electrophilic) reagent in organic synthesis. Read More....
A recent study examines the potential role of pyrophosphate linkages in prebiotic chemistry and the origins of life.....
... and has been selected to be part of Hot Topic: RNA
Carbohydrate chemistry is important to living organisms on Earth......
See the video by Stated Clearly here
Par Jean-Paul Baquiast
US researchers may have solved one of chemistry and biology’s biggest chicken-or-egg conundrums. Joel F. Hooper reports.
Where did we come from? Probably few questions are as challenging to scientists as this one. But Furman students working with chemistry professor Greg Springsteen may have come a step closer to understanding the beginnings of life on Earth.
By Poulami Nag
Experiments in 'primordial' conditions (maybe) found chemical reactions that ape a key biological cycle and could exist under the extreme conditions of billions of years ago BY RUTH SCHUSTER
**********************************************************************************************************
LA JOLLA, Calif. – Nov. 6, 2017 – Chemists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have found a compound that may have been a crucial factor in the origins of life on Earth.More here .....
**********************************************************************************************************
The evolutionary path to first proteins may have been paved with relatively easy, small square-dance steps....
Read more here by Ben Brumfiled
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41570-017-0082
http://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1038/s41570-017-0082
As to how the depsipeptide idea came about and progressed within the Center for Chemical Evolution ...read the background here
***************************
*************************
*************************
***************************
By Firman Akhsanu
*******************
TSRI Scientists Find Evidence for Alternate Theory of How Life Arose
By Madeline McCurry-Schmidt
***********************
LA JOLLA, CA – September 28, 2016 – A new study led by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) offers a twist on a popular theory for how life on Earth began about four billion years ago.
New research shows each molecule needed the other one
*************************
The crucibles that bore out early building blocks of life may have been, in many cases, modest puddles.
Now, researchers working with that hypothesis have achieved a significant advancement toward unlocking a longstanding evolutionary mystery -- how components of RNA and DNA formed from chemicals present on early Earth before life existed. It could also have implications on how astrobiologists view the probability of live elsewhere in the universe.
*********************************************
So do scientists! Though the question has not yet been fully answered, a careful study of Chemical Evolution is beginning to shed light on this mystery.
*********************************************
Prebiotic Chemistry: Researchers discover a potential prebiotic reaction that can form tartrates, providing another possible entry point to an early citric acid cycle
By Melissae Fellet
Biologists ponder what fundamental discoveries might match the excitement of the Higgs boson.
Synthetic strands with different backbones replicate and evolve just like the real thing.
by Roberta Kwok who is a freelance writer in the San Francisco Bay Area, California.
Prebiotic Chemistry: Experiments reveal a possible path to forming the sugar in RNA
By Mellisae Fellet
------------------------------------------
in ACS Chemical Biology - Spotlight March 16, 2012 , Volume 7, Issue 3, Pages 421-614
By Sarah A. Webb, Ph.D.
Researchers have struggled to uncover the chemical mechanisms that could have converted an abiotic “primordial soup” into building blocks of biopolymers. In examining the formation of carbohydrates from fundamental components such as water and carbon dioxide, researchers initially proposed the formose reaction that converts formaldehyde to a mixture of aldoses and ketoses in a series of steps.
--------------------------------------
Exploratory Experiments on the Chemistry of the "Glyoxylate Scenario": Formation of Ketosugars from Dihydroxyfumarate. Sagi, V.N.; Punna, V.; Hu, F.; Meher, G.; Krishnamurthy, R. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2012, 134, pp 3577–3589
By Mark Schrope
By John Sutherland
For the original papers see
Mapping the Landscape of Potentially Primordial Informational Oligomers: Oligo-Dipeptides Tagged with 2,4-Disubstituted 5-amino-pyrimidines as Recognition Elements. Mittapalli, G.K.; Osornio, Y.M.; Guerrero, M.A.; Ravinder, K.R.; Krishnamurthy, R.; Eschenmoser, A. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2007, 46, 2478-2484.
Mapping the Landscape of Potentially Primordial Informational Oligomers: Oligo-dipeptides and Oligo-dipeptoids Tagged with Triazines as Recognition Elements. Mittapalli, G.K.; Ravinder, K.R.; Xiong, H.; Munoz, O.; Han, B.; De Riccardis, De F.; Krishnamurthy, R.; Eschenmoser, A. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2007, 46, 2470-2477.
by Shige Abe
DNA is the building block for life on Earth. But it is a highly complex molecule, and could not have arranged itself spontaneously. What did it develop from? Astrobiologists examine possible ancestors of DNA: nucleic acids called PNA, p-RNA, and TNA.
For the full article see this link
California: 10550 North Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, CA 92037 - (858) 784-1000
Florida: 130 Scripps Way, Jupiter, FL 33458 - (561) 228-2000
Copyright © 2025, The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI). All Rights Reserved.
