Prebiotic chemistry aims to explain how the biochemistry of life as we know it came to be.
Most efforts in this area have focused on provisioning compounds of importance to life by …

The origin of life entails a continuum from simple prebiotic chemistry to cells with genes and
molecular machines. Using life as a guide to this continuum, we consider how selection …

Life builds its molecules from carbon dioxide (CO2) and breaks them back down again
through the intermediacy of just five metabolites, which are the universal hubs of …

The chemistry of abiotic nucleotide synthesis of RNA and DNA in the context of their
prebiotic origins on early earth is a continuing challenge. How did (or how can) the …

Under enzyme catalysis, adenosine triphosphate (ATP) transfers a phosphoryl group to
canonical ribonucleotide diphosphates (NDPs) to form ribonucleotide triphosphates (NTPs) …

ATP is universally conserved as the principal energy currency in cells, driving metabolism
through phosphorylation and condensation reactions. Such deep conservation suggests that …

Vesicles formed from single-chain amphiphiles (SCAs) such as fatty acids probably played
an important role in the origin of life. A major criticism of the hypothesis that life arose in an …

Hydrogen (H2) is a geological source of reducing electrons that is thought to have powered
the metabolism of the last universal common ancestor to all extant life, and that is still …

The Strecker reaction of aldehydes is the pre-eminent pathway to explain the prebiotic
origins of α-amino acids. However, biology employs transamination of α-ketoacids to …

The aim of this article is to provide the reader with an overview of the different possible
scenarios for the emergence of life, to critically assess them and, according to the …