University of Strasbourg, CNRS, ISIS UMR 7006, 67000 Strasbourg, France.
Chem Rev. 2020 Aug 12;120(15):7708-7744. doi: 10.1021/acs.chemrev.0c00191. Epub 2020 Jul 20.
Prebiotic chemistry aims to explain how the biochemistry of life as we know it came to be. Most efforts in this area have focused on provisioning compounds of importance to life by multistep synthetic routes that do not resemble biochemistry. However, gaining insight into why core metabolism uses the molecules, reactions, pathways, and overall organization that it does requires us to consider molecules not only as synthetic end goals. Equally important are the dynamic processes that build them up and break them down. This perspective has led many researchers to the hypothesis that the first stage of the origin of life began with the onset of a primitive nonenzymatic version of metabolism, initially catalyzed by naturally occurring minerals and metal ions. This view of life's origins has come to be known as "metabolism first". Continuity with modern metabolism would require a primitive version of metabolism to build and break down ketoacids, sugars, amino acids, and ribonucleotides in much the same way as the pathways that do it today. This review discusses metabolic pathways of relevance to the origin of life in a manner accessible to chemists, and summarizes experiments suggesting several pathways might have their roots in prebiotic chemistry. Finally, key remaining milestones for the protometabolic hypothesis are highlighted.
前生物化学旨在解释我们所知道的生命的生物化学是如何产生的。该领域的大多数研究都集中在通过多步合成途径提供对生命重要的化合物上，这些途径与生物化学并不相似。然而，要深入了解核心代谢为什么使用它所使用的分子、反应、途径和整体组织，我们不仅需要将分子视为合成的最终目标，还需要考虑构建和分解它们的动态过程。这种观点促使许多研究人员提出假设，认为生命起源的第一阶段始于原始非酶代谢的出现，最初由天然存在的矿物质和金属离子催化。这种对生命起源的看法被称为“代谢优先”。与现代代谢的连续性要求原始代谢以与今天的途径非常相似的方式构建和分解酮酸、糖、氨基酸和核糖核苷酸。这篇综述以化学家易于理解的方式讨论了与生命起源相关的代谢途径，并总结了一些实验表明，几种途径可能起源于前生物化学。最后，突出了原代谢假说的关键剩余里程碑。
