 Piet
Herdewijn and M. Volkan Kisakürek (Eds.)
Origin of Life
Chemical Approach
March 2008
418 Pages, Hardcover
ISBN-10: 3-906390-50-0
ISBN-13: 978-3-906390-50-5
Description
Dedicated to the fond memory of two great pioneers of this
science, Leslie E. Orgel and Stanley L. Miller, this compilation
of reviews and original manuscripts provides an overview of the current state of
the art, written by some of the eminent ‘players’ in this creative domain of
‘explorative chemistry’.
Since we are still far from finding a definitive answer to the most fundamental
of questions in science, ‘chemistry’ here is defined in its broadest sense. It
is against this background that the contributions cover such a wide range of
theories, including chemistry and selection, evolution of the pioneer organism,
chemical aspects of synthetic biology, ribozyme catalysis of metabolism in the
RNA world, intractable mixtures and the origin of life, the chemical etiology of
nucleic acids, interstellar amino acids, and even the chemistry that preceded
life's origin.
The majority of the articles reproduced in this volume originally appeared in a
special issue of Chemistry & Biodiversity under the title ‘On Chemistry Leading
to Life’s Origin’.
Index
What Is Life? A Brief Historical Overview
A. Lazcano
Reactions of the HCN-Tetramer with Aldehydes
K. Koch, W. B. Schweizer, A. Eschenmoser*
On a Hypothetical Generational Relationship between HCN and
Constituents of the Reductive Citric Acid Cycle
A. Eschenmoser
Chemistry and Selection
C. de Duve
On the Chemistry and Evolution of the Pioneer Organism
G. Wächtershäuser
Physico-Chemical and Evolutionary Constraints for the Formation
and Selection of First Biopolymers: Towards the Consensus Paradigm of the
Abiogenic Origin of Life
A. Y. Mulkidjanian*, M. Y. Galperin
Chemical Aspects of Synthetic Biology
P. L. Luisi
Errors and Alternatives in Prebiotic Replication and Catalysis
J. Ninio
Evolution of Optimal Accuracy and Stability in Biological
Systems
R. Holliday
Ribozyme Catalysis of Metabolism in the RNA World
X. Chen, N. Li, A. D. Ellington*
RNAs in Extreme Environments
C. Torchet, M.-C. Maurel*
Intractable Mixtures and the Origin of Life
A. W. Schwartz
The First Steps of Chemical Evolution towards the Origin of Life
B. M. Rode*, D. Fitz, T. Jakschitz
From Interstellar Amino Acids to Prebiotic Catalytic Peptides: A
Review
A. Brack
The Chemistry That Preceded Life’s Origin: A Study Guide from
Meteorites
S. Pizzarello
Formamide Chemistry and the Origin of Informational Polymers
R. Saladino, C. Crestini, F. Ciciriello, G. Costanzo, E. Di
Mauro*
RNA: Prebiotic Product,or Biotic Invention?
C. Anastasi, F. F. Buchet,
M. A. Crowe, A. L. Parkes,
M. W. Powner, J. M. Smith, J. D. Sutherland*
Peptide Nucleic Acids and the Origin of Life
P. E. Nielsen
Chemical Etiology of Nucleic Acids: Aminopropyl Nucleic Acids (APNAs)
D. Zhou, M. Froeyen,
J. Rozenski,
A. Van Aerschot,
P. Herdewijn*
Nonenzymatic Recombination of RNA: Possible Mechanism for the Formation of Novel Sequences
A. V. Lutay*, M. A. Zenkova,
V. V. Vlassov
Differences in Substrate Specificity of C(5)-Substituted
or C(5)-Unsubstituted Pyrimidine Nucleotides by DNA Polymerases from Thermophilic Bacteria,Archaea, and Phages
H. Sawai*, J. Nagashima,
M. Kuwahara,
R. Kitagata,
T. Tamura,
I. Matsui
Addressing the Problems of Base Pairing and Strand Cyclization
in Template-Directed Synthesis. A Case for the Utility and Necessity of ‘Molecular Midwives’ and Reversible Backbone Linkages for the Origin of proto-RNA
N. V. Hud*, S. S. Jain,
X. Li,
D. G. Lynn*
Enzymatic Catalyzed DNA Synthesis using
l-Asp-dGMP,
l-Asp-dCMP, and
l-Asp-dTMP
M. Terrazas, P. Marlière,
P. Herdewijn*
Chemical Primer Extension: Individual Steps of Spontaneous
Replication
J. A. Rojas Stütz, E. Kervio,
C. Deck,
C. Richert*
Conformational and Chiral Selection of Oligonucleotides
M. Froeyen, F. Morvan,
J.-J. Vasseur,
P. Nielsen,
A. Van Aerschot, H. Rosemeyer, P. Herdewijn*
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