Tyagi S, Ponnamperuma C
Department of Chemistry, University of Maryland, College Park 20742.
J Mol Evol. 1990 May;30(5):391-9. doi: 10.1007/BF02101111.
We have synthesized and studied the properties of phosphoanhydrides of alanine with guanosine monophosphate, uridine monophosphate, and adenosine monophosphate. This series of compounds allowed us to investigate the specificity of peptide bound formation in a reaction that could have taken place on the prebiotic earth. We asked whether the intrinsic reactivity of the amino acids, the nature of the nucleotide in the anhydride, or the complementary polynucleotide template influences the specificity of the peptide synthesis reaction. We observed that the differential reactivity of the amino acids results in nearest-neighbor preferences during the peptide synthesis, whereas the nature of the nucleotides and the presence of complementary polynucleotides had no influence on the specificity. These results suggest that some peptides would have been more abundant than others on the prebiotic earth and have implications for the study of the origins of the genetic code and protein synthesis.
我们合成并研究了丙氨酸与鸟苷一磷酸、尿苷一磷酸和腺苷一磷酸的磷酸酐的性质。这一系列化合物使我们能够研究在可能发生于前生物地球的反应中肽键形成的特异性。我们探讨了氨基酸的内在反应性、酸酐中核苷酸的性质或互补多核苷酸模板是否会影响肽合成反应的特异性。我们观察到，氨基酸的差异反应性导致肽合成过程中出现最近邻偏好，而核苷酸的性质和互补多核苷酸的存在对特异性没有影响。这些结果表明，在前生物地球上，某些肽可能比其他肽更为丰富，这对遗传密码和蛋白质合成起源的研究具有启示意义。
