An Individual Amino Acid as a Possible Prebiotic Catalyst

Abstract

What do you consider to be the exciting developments in the field?We demonstrated the catalytic activity of the non-coded amino acid DOPA. In some cases, DOPA performed better than the coded amino acid His. We believe that this finding on a noncoded amino acid can advance the area of prebiotic catalysis. Hopefully, it will lead to a better understanding of enzyme's evolution.

1-Naphthylacetic acid appended amino acids-based hydrogels: probing of the supramolecular catalysis of ester hydrolysis reaction

“…The possible ionic species and their corresponding masses are shown in Table S5. † The hydrolysis of PNPA could have happened due to the involvement of the hydroxyl ion as nucleophile 40,42,43,62 because an alkoxide ion intermediate was identied in the mass spectrometric analysis (see Table S5 and Fig. S32-S42 †).…”

“…42 Reches and her co-workers have also recently developed a catalyst based on a non-proteinogenic amino acid L-3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine (DOPA), for ester hydrolysis reaction. 43 (ii) Catalytic triad mimics the peptide side chains: Woolfson and his coworkers developed coiled-coil heptamer-based peptides with 21 mutations to polar amino acids within the barrel structure of preinstalled triads (cysteine-histidine-glutamic acid) on each of helices for the hydrolysis of p-nitrophenyl acetate. 44 Guler and his co-workers extensively studied the effect of serine, histidine and aspartic acid in lauryl-appended pentapeptide sequences and effect of these nanostructures on the ester hydrolysis reaction.…”

Assembly‐driven protection from hydrolysis as key selective force during chemical evolution

“…Simple peptides and even single amino acids can assemble [46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63]. Peptides can assemble to membranelike structures [64,65] or drive the formation of coacervate droplets to compartmentalize organic molecules [66].…”

Self-assembled prebiotic amphiphile-mixture exhibits tunable catalytic properties

“…It is believed that catalysis had an essential role in the prebiotic era to perform complex reactions from simple ones. 3,4 Since complex enzymes were not present at that time, small-molecule catalysis by amino acids, 5,6 short random peptides, 7,8 proto-RNA, 9,10 or amphiphiles 11,12 played a crucial role. Subsequently, proposal of the RNA-world hypothesis, protein-world hypothesis, and lipid-world hypothesis has emerged to understand early life on Earth.…”