A number of routes have been suggested for the prebiotic synthesis of uracil involving the reaction of urea with malic acid, propiolic acid, cyanoacetylene and others. Cyanoacetylene has been detected in the interstellar medium as well as simulated prebiotic experiments. It is therefore plausible that dicyanoacetylene and its hydrolytic product acetylene dicarboxylic acid (ADCA) may have played a role in chemical evolution. This aspect has been examined in the present work for the synthesis of uracil from ADCA and urea reaction. It was found that when ADCA reacted with urea, uracil was formed only in the presence of phosphoric acid and phosphates. ammonium phosphates gave higher yields of uracil than other phosphates. In the absence of phosphoric acid or phosphates no uracil formation took place. This type of synthesis could have taken place in prebiotic oceans which contained ammonium phosphates and other salts.
It has been observed that beta-hydroxy-alpha-amino acids are transformed into other amino acids, when heated in dilute solutions with phosphorous acid, phosphoric acid or their ammonium salts. It has been shown that as in the case of previously reported glycine-aldehyde reactions, glycine also reacts with acetone to give beta-hydroxyvaline under prebiologically feasible conditions. It is suggested, therefore, that the formation of beta-hydroxy-alpha-amino acids and their transformation to other amino acids may have been a pathway for the synthesis of amino acids under primitive earth conditions.
Abstract:A practical synthesis of the title compounds has been developed. The salient features of the synthesis were i) use of easily accessible starting materials viz. aleuritic acid, 10-undecenoic acid, cyclohexanone etc. and ii) fixation of the required olefinic geometry via Wittig and acetylenic routes.
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