Amino acids are building blocks of dna8/15/2023 "If you mix only the keto acid, cyanide and ammonia, it just sits there. "We were expecting it to be quite difficult to figure this out, and it turned out to be even simpler than we had imagined," says Krishnamurthy. With this mixture, they quickly started seeing amino acids form. ![]() Then, through trial and error, they discovered a third key ingredient: carbon dioxide. Because they knew nitrogen would be required in some form, they added ammonia - a form of nitrogen that would have been present on the early earth. But that idea has led to debate about how and when the switch occurred from aldehydes to α-keto acids as the key ingredient for making amino acids.Īfter their success using cyanide to drive other chemical reactions, Krishnamurthy and his colleagues suspected that cyanide, even without enzymes, might also help turn α-keto acids into amino acids. However, many have hypothesized that before the advent of cellular life, amino acids must have been generated from completely different precursors, aldehydes, rather than α-keto acids, since enzymes to carry out the conversion did not yet exist. Researchers have found evidence that α-keto acids likely existed early in Earth's history. In cells today, amino acids are generated from precursors called α-keto acids using both nitrogen and specialized proteins called enzymes. The researchers wondered whether, under the same conditions, there was a way to generate amino acids, more complex molecules that compose proteins in all known living cells. Unlike previously proposed reactions, this one worked at room temperature and in a wide pH range. In addition to giving researchers insight into the chemistry of the early earth, the newly discovered chemical reactions are also useful in certain manufacturing processes, such as the generation of custom labeled biomolecules from inexpensive starting materials.Įarlier this year, Krishnamurthy's group showed how cyanide can enable the chemical reactions that turn prebiotic molecules and water into basic organic compounds required for life. "We think the kind of reactions we've described are probably what could have happened on early earth." ![]() ![]() "We've come up with a new paradigm to explain this shift from prebiotic to biotic chemistry," says Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy, PhD, an associate professor of chemistry at Scripps Research, and lead author of the new paper, published Jin the journal Nature Chemistry.
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