HONG KONG: The interdependence of genetic material, proteins, and fatty lipids have long created a sort of paradox when it comes to trying to figure out how life on Earth originated, but a new study has proposed that all three factors originated from a pair of simple compounds.
In the study, which was published online in the journal Nature Chemistry, researchers from the University of Cambridge explain that precursors of ribonucleotides (RNA), amino acids and lipids can all be derived simple reactions involving hydrogen cyanide and its derivatives.
As a result, they continue, all of the cellular subsystems may have arisen simultaneously through common chemistry centered around the reductive homologation of the compound. The key parts of the reaction are driven by ultraviolet light, use hydrogen sulfide as the reductant, and are sped up by Cu(I)–Cu(II) photoredox cycling, the authors wrote in their new paper.
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