Department of Chemistry, University College London, London, UK.
Nat Rev Chem. 2024 Nov;8(11):817-832. doi: 10.1038/s41570-024-00648-5. Epub 2024 Sep 27.
Water is essential for life as we know it, but it has paradoxically been considered inimical to the emergence of life. Proteins and nucleic acids have sustained evolution and life for billions of years, but both are condensation polymers, suggesting that their formation requires the elimination of water. This presents intrinsic challenges at the origins of life, including how condensation polymer synthesis can overcome the thermodynamic pressure of hydrolysis in water and how nucleophiles can kinetically outcompete water to yield condensation products. The answers to these questions lie in balancing thermodynamic activation and kinetic stability. For peptides, an effective strategy is to directly harness the energy trapped in prebiotic molecules, such as nitriles, and avoid the formation of fully hydrolysed monomers. In this Review, we discuss how chemical energy can be built into precursors, retained, and released selectively for polymer synthesis. Looking to the future, the outstanding goals include how nucleic acids can be synthesized, avoiding the formation of fully hydrolysed monomers and what caused information to flow from nucleic acids to proteins.
众所周知，水是生命所必需的，但它却被认为不利于生命的出现。蛋白质和核酸已经维持了数十亿年的进化和生命，但它们都是缩合聚合物，这表明它们的形成需要排除水。这在生命起源时带来了内在的挑战，包括缩合聚合物合成如何克服水中水解的热力学压力，以及亲核试剂如何通过动力学竞争来取代水以生成缩合产物。这些问题的答案在于平衡热力学激活和动力学稳定性。对于肽来说，一种有效的策略是直接利用前生物分子（如腈）中捕获的能量，并避免完全水解单体的形成。在这篇综述中，我们讨论了如何将化学能构建到前体中，并选择性地保留和释放，以用于聚合物合成。展望未来，突出的目标包括如何合成核酸，避免完全水解单体的形成，以及是什么导致信息从核酸流向蛋白质。
