Newly-discovered chemical reactions could explain how life began on Earth

Astrobiologists at Scripps Research have discovered a new set of chemical reactions that could explain how life began on Earth billions of years ago. The researchers, supported by the NASA Astrobiology Program, believe that the chemical reactions could have taken place on ancient Earth at a time when the first living cells appeared.

The newly-discovered chemical reactions use cyanide, ammonia, and carbon dioxide - all thought to be common on the early earth - to produce amino acids and nucleic acids, the building blocks of proteins and DNA.

The new set of reactions not only gives researchers insight into the chemistry of the early earth but is also useful in certain manufacturing processes, such as the generation of custom-labelled biomolecules from inexpensive starting materials, according to a media release by Scripps Research.

"We've come up with a new paradigm to explain this shift from prebiotic to biotic chemistry. We think the kind of reactions we've described are probably what could have happened on early earth," says Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy, PhD, an associate professor of chemistry at Scripps Research, and lead author of the new paper.

🚨 Discovery alert: #astrobiologists have found a new set of chemical reactions that could explain how life began on the early Earth. The research also helps bring together two sides of a long-standing debate about the importance of carbon dioxide to early life. pic.twitter.com/hmVM5Wvjc1

— NASA Astrobiology: Exploring Life in the Universe (@NASAAstrobio) August 1, 2022

The paper titled "Prebiotic synthesis of α-amino acids and orotate from α-ketoacids potentiates transition to extant metabolic pathways" was published July 28, 2022 in the journal Nature Chemistry.