Investigations into
the chemical origin of life have recently benefitted
from a holistic approach in which possible atmospheric, organic, and
inorganic systems chemistries are taken into consideration. In this
way, we now report that a selective phosphate activating agent, namely
methyl isocyanide, could plausibly have been produced from simple
prebiotic feedstocks. We show that methyl isocyanide drives the conversion
of nucleoside monophosphates to phosphorimidazolides under potentially
prebiotic conditions and in excellent yields for the first time. Importantly,
this chemistry allows for repeated reactivation cycles, a property
long sought in nonenzymatic oligomerization studies. Further, as the
isocyanide is released upon irradiation, the possibility of spatially
and temporally controlled activation chemistry is thus raised.