Chemical systems, chemical contiguity and the emergence of life

• Terrence P. Kee and
• Pierre-Alain Monnard

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2017, 13, 1551–1563, doi:10.3762/bjoc.13.155

• have been proposed to explain that transition or its various stages, e.g., the lipid-, metabolism- or RNA-world, which in general tend to emphasize an aspect of the question that is directly related to the research field of their proponents. Each of these different, reductionist views is a natural one

Framing major prebiotic transitions as stages of protocell development: three challenges for origins-of-life research

• Ben Shirt-Ediss,
• Sara Murillo-Sánchez and
• Kepa Ruiz-Mirazo

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2017, 13, 1388–1395, doi:10.3762/bjoc.13.135

• devoted to control division processes. Challenge 3: characterizing the evolutionary dynamics of pre-Darwinian protocells. Rather than focusing on the reaction kinetics and evolutionary dynamics of populations of naked nucleic acid molecules (the core idea underlying the ‘RNA world’ hypothesis), or even

From chemical metabolism to life: the origin of the genetic coding process

• Antoine Danchin

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2017, 13, 1119–1135, doi:10.3762/bjoc.13.111

• parallel requirement [66]. This view of the RNA-genome world summarises in fact the widespread accepted view of the RNA world, which, in the absence of the idea of an RNA-metabolism world, obscures all the metabolic steps that would have been necessary for stable synthesis of the nucleotides essential for

How and why kinetics, thermodynamics, and chemistry induce the logic of biological evolution

• Addy Pross and
• Robert Pascal

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2017, 13, 665–674, doi:10.3762/bjoc.13.66

• developments [13][14] have supported a kinetically based view. Taking that kinetic approach, the concept of natural selection was able to be extended beyond biology so as to be applicable at the molecular level. Both views progressed separately in a context dominated by the RNA world hypothesis, though that

Conjecture and hypothesis: The importance of reality checks

• David Deamer

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2017, 13, 620–624, doi:10.3762/bjoc.13.60

• polymerization is obvious and was first proposed years ago [19]. Lahav and White [20] adopted the approach and demonstrated that peptide bonds could be produced using clay as a catalyst. The approach was largely abandoned with the advent of the RNA World scenario that suggested a way for life to begin in

Synthesis of a bifunctional cytidine derivative and its conjugation to RNA for in vitro selection of a cytidine deaminase ribozyme

• Nico Rublack and
• Sabine Müller

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2014, 10, 1906–1913, doi:10.3762/bjoc.10.198

• derivative suitable for conjugation to RNA and linkage of the conjugated library to a streptavidine-coated surface. Successful conjugation of the cytidine derivative to the 3'-terminus of a model RNA is demonstrated. Keywords: cytidine deaminase; modified nucleoside; nucleic acids; ribozyme; RNA world

• RNA catalysts that support an aldol reaction between an aldehyde and a ketone, relevant to the synthesis of sugars [6], or the linkage of ribose to nucleobases to generate nucleotides [7]. Such ribozymes are seen as important functional entities underscoring the RNA world theory, where ribonucleic

• acids are suggested acting as the carrier of genetic information as well as functional players enabling RNA amplification and processing [8]. Even though a number of ribozymes supporting the RNA world theory are known, there is a wide field of protein-catalyzed reactions in present-day organisms, for