Department of Chemistry, University College London, London WC1H 0AJ, UK.
Department of Chemistry and Centre for the Physical Science of Life, King's College London, London SE1 1DB, UK.
Science. 2024 Feb 23;383(6685):911-918. doi: 10.1126/science.adk4432. Epub 2024 Feb 22.
Coenzyme A (CoA) is essential to all life on Earth, and its functional subunit, pantetheine, is important in many origin-of-life scenarios, but how pantetheine emerged on the early Earth remains a mystery. Earlier attempts to selectively synthesize pantetheine failed, leading to suggestions that "simpler" thiols must have preceded pantetheine at the origin of life. In this work, we report high-yielding and selective prebiotic syntheses of pantetheine in water. Chemoselective multicomponent aldol, iminolactone, and aminonitrile reactions delivered spontaneous differentiation of pantoic acid and proteinogenic amino acid syntheses, as well as the dihydroxyl, gem-dimethyl, and β-alanine-amide moieties of pantetheine in dilute water. Our results are consistent with a role for canonical pantetheine at the outset of life on Earth.
辅酶 A（CoA）对地球上所有生命都是必不可少的，其功能亚单位泛酸是许多生命起源场景中的重要物质，但泛酸在早期地球上是如何出现的仍然是个谜。早期尝试选择性合成泛酸的尝试均以失败告终，这导致人们提出，在生命起源时，“更简单”的硫醇必须先于泛酸出现。在这项工作中，我们报告了在水中高产率和选择性的前生物合成泛酸。化学选择性的多组分羟醛、亚氨基内酯和氨基腈反应自发地将泛酸和蛋白质氨基酸合成区分开来，同时也得到了泛酸的二羟基、偕二甲基和β-丙氨酸酰胺部分在稀水中的产物。我们的结果与经典泛酸在地球生命起源之初的作用一致。
