‘Missing link’ in origin of life on Earth found

Scientists, including those of Indian origin, have discovered a compound that may have played a crucial role in the origin of life on Earth. Researchers at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) in the US hypothesised that a chemical reaction called phosphorylation may have been crucial for the assembly of three key ingredients in early life forms. These ingredients are short strands of nucleotides to store genetic information, short chains of amino acids (peptides) to do the main work of cells, and lipids to form encapsulating structures such as cell walls.

No one has ever found a phosphorylating agent that was plausibly present on early Earth and could have produced these three classes of molecules side-by-side under the same realistic conditions, researchers said. TSRI chemists have now identified just such a compound: diamidophosphate (DAP). “We suggest a phosphorylation chemistry that could have given rise, all in the same place, to oligonucleotides, oligopeptides, and the cell-like structures to enclose them,” said Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy, associate professor of chemistry at TSRI.

“That in turn would have allowed other chemistries that were not possible before, potentially leading to the first simple, cell-based living entities,” Krishnamurthy said. The study, published in the journal Nature Chemistry, is part of …read more