Origins of life: Systems chemistry on early Earth

@article{Szostak2009OriginsOL,
  title={Origins of life: Systems chemistry on early Earth},
  author={Jack W. Szostak},
  journal={Nature},
  year={2009},
  volume={459},
  pages={171-172}
}
Understanding how life emerged on Earth is one of the greatest challenges facing modern chemistry. A new way of looking at the synthesis of RNA sidesteps a thorny problem in the field. 
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molbio.mgh.harvard.edu
98 Citations
Background Citations
20
Methods Citations
1

98 Citations

Citation Type

Citation Type

Prebiotic Systems Chemistry: Complexity Overcoming Clutter
From soup to peptides
TLDR
A bottom-up approach for forming peptides, taking place under mild, prebiotically-plausible conditions, has been developed, which uses α-aminonitrile precursors, bypassing α-amino acids entirely.
On the Emergence of Living Systems
TLDR
The resources of the new sciences of complex systems dynamics can provide a more robust conceptual framework within which to explore the possible pathways of chemical complexification leading to living systems and biosemiosis.
Illuminating Life’s Origins: UV Photochemistry in Abiotic Synthesis of Biomolecules
TLDR
Reactivity and selectivity in photochemical prebiotic synthesis are discussed, as are their implications for origins of life scenarios and their plausibility, and the future directions of this research.
Primal Eukaryogenesis: On the Communal Nature of Precellular States, Ancestral to Modern Life
TLDR
The coevolutionary emergence from a communal system at the common root can most naturally explain the vast discrepancy in subcellular organization between modern eukaryotes on the one hand and both archaea and bacteria on the other.
Chemistry of Abiotic Nucleotide Synthesis.
TLDR
This review provides a background and up-to-date progress that will allow the reader to judge where the field stands currently and what remains to be achieved, and concludes with a cautionary note about coming to conclusions about whether the problem of chemistry of prebiotic nucleotide synthesis has been solved.
Is the transition from chemistry to biology a mystery?
TLDR
The task to understand life's origin as a rational process is closely related to the earlier attempts of the present author to design and construct supra-molecular machines and the approach given here is an attempt.
The evolving ribosome: from non-coded peptide bond formation to sophisticated translation machinery.
Fougerite: the not so simple progenitor of the first cells
TLDR
An extended version of the AHV scenario is put forward which enhances the conformity between extant life and its earliest progenitor by extensively making use of fougerite's mechanistic and catalytic particularities.
Conversion of Biosynthetic Precursors of RNA to Those of DNA by Photoredox Chemistry
TLDR
DNA biosynthetic precursors can be formed abiotically from those of RNA allowing for an early evolutionary transition to life based on RNA and DNA.
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References

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TLDR
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TLDR
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TLDR
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RNA world