Sprecher
Beschreibung
The chemical unity of life’s universal metabolites provides compelling evidence that a simple set of predisposed reactions predicated the appearance of life on Earth. However, the nature of the chemistry that preceded life remains an open question. Prebiotic systems chemistry is now providing unprecedented scope to explore the origins of life and an exciting new perspective on a 4-billion-year-old problem. At the heart of this new systems approach is an understanding that individual classes of metabolites cannot be considered in isolation if the chemical origin of life on Earth is to be successfully elucidated.
In this talk several recent advances that suggest proteinogenic peptides and life’s universal co-factors are both chemically predisposed to form will be presented. Two different classes of universal metabolite will be shown to be facilely synthesized in water, through non-enzymatic chemistry. It will also be demonstrated that the pathways to these structures spontaneously and selectively differentiate.
