Prebiotic syntheses of purines and pyrimidines

Basile, Brenda; Lazcano, Antonio; Oró, J.

doi:10.1016/0273-1177(84)90554-4

Cited by 35 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 40 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This finding correlates with the chemical synthesis under prebiotic conditions for nitrogenous base precursors for the purine salvage pathway, as previously described [10, 13, 42, 43] (Figure 3, blue circles). The findings of those previous studies agree with the fact that these routes were dependent on PRPP biosynthesis, since it has been argued that PRPP, nucleosides, and nucleotides are susceptible to hydrolysis and thus are very unlikely prebiotic compounds.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 90%

“…Specifically, the emergence of an ancestral folding or P-loop hydrolase appeared parallel to this metabolism [11], reinforcing its antiquity. In addition, many of the intermediates associated with this metabolic module have been intimately associated with prebiotic chemistry and the origin of life [10, 12, 13]. In this regard, we adopted a multigenomic strategy for the reconstruction and analysis of the metabolism of nucleotides, evaluating the contribution of the origin and diversification of de novo and salvage pathways for nucleotides in the evolution of organisms.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Comparative genomics of nucleotide metabolism: a tour to the past of the three cellular domains of life

Armenta-Medina¹,

Segovia²,

Pérez‐Rueda³

2014

BMC Genomics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

BackgroundNucleotide metabolism is central to all biological systems, due to their essential role in genetic information and energy transfer, which in turn suggests its possible presence in the last common ancestor (LCA) of Bacteria, Archaea and Eukarya. In this context, elucidation of the contribution of the origin and diversification of de novo and salvage pathways of nucleotide metabolism will allow us to understand the links between the enzymatic steps associated with the LCA and the emergence of the first metabolic pathways.ResultsIn this work, the taxonomical distribution of the enzymes associated with nucleotide metabolism was evaluated in 1,606 complete genomes. 151 sequence profiles associated with 120 enzymatic reactions were used. The evaluation was based on profile comparisons, using RPS-Blast. Organisms were clustered based on their taxonomical classifications, in order to obtain a normalized measure of the taxonomical distribution of enzymes according to the average of presence/absence of enzymes per genus, which in turn was used for the second step, to calculate the average presence/absence of enzymes per Clade.ConclusionFrom these analyses, it was suggested that divergence at the enzymatic level correlates with environmental changes and related modifications of the cell wall and membranes that took place during cell evolution. Specifically, the divergence of the 5-(carboxyamino) imidazole ribonucleotide mutase to phosphoribosylaminoimidazole carboxylase could be related to the emergence of multicellularity in eukaryotic cells. In addition, segments of salvage and de novo pathways were probably complementary in the LCA to the synthesis of purines and pyrimidines. We also suggest that a large portion of the pathway to inosine 5’-monophosphate (IMP) in purines could have been involved in thiamine synthesis or its derivatives in early stages of cellular evolution, correlating with the fact that these molecules may have played an active role in the protein-RNA world. The analysis presented here provides general observations concerning the adaptation of the enzymatic steps in the early stages of the emergence of life and the LCA.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1471-2164-15-800) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

show abstract

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 90%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparative genomics of nucleotide metabolism: a tour to the past of the three cellular domains of life

Armenta-Medina¹,

Segovia²,

Pérez‐Rueda³

2014

BMC Genomics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Laboratory work has suggested that purines and pyrimidines might be formed in the ISM starting from hydrogen cyanide or cyanoacetylene [79], or from even more simple gases like NH 3 , N 2 , CO 2 and H 2 O [84]. Speculation has been made on the possible formation of adenine in the ISM by successive condensation reactions of HCN [85] but this proposal has been contested by Smith et al [86].…”

Section: Astrophysical Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…Nitrogen heterocyclic molecules are considered to be some of the possible building blocks of life [79]. If synthesized and preserved during the formation of the solar nebula, they could have been, and continue to be, transported to Earth via asteroids, comets and meteors, all of which vectors can provide protective environments.…”

Section: Astrophysical Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

VUV photophysics and dissociative photoionization of pyrimidine, purine, imidazole and benzimidazole in the 7–18eV photon energy range

et al. 2008

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…The generation of a guanidinium group could be facilitated by effective concentrations of ammonia and cyanide derivatives such as cyanamide and dicyanamide. Both hydrogen cyanide and dicyanamide have been invoked as significant primordial reactants for the production of biological precursor molecules (Basile et al 1984;Steinman and Capolupo 1969). From this perspective two possible scenarios can be invoked: either the primordial concentration of arginine was sufficient for it initially to be encoded as such or, possibly less likely, CGN first coded for a different 5-carbon amino acid such as norleucine and subsequently this amino acid was replaced by arginine.…”

Section: Codon-anticodon Thermostabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Evolution of the Genetic Code Revisited

Travers

2006

Orig Life Evol Biosph

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The evolution of the genetic code in terms of the adoption of new codons has previously been related to the relative thermostability of codon-anticodon interactions such that the most stable interactions have been hypothesised to represent the most ancient coding capacity. This derivation is critically dependent on the accuracy of the experimentally determined stability parameters. A new set of parameters recently determined for B-DNA reveals that the codon-anticodon pairs for the codes in non-plant mitochondria on the one hand and prokaryotic and eukaryotic organisms on the other can be unequivocally divided into two classes - the most stable base steps define a common code specified by the first two bases in a codon while the less stable base steps correlate with divergent usage and the adoption of a 3-letter code. This pattern suggests that the fixation of codons for A, G, P, V, S, T, D/E, R may have preceded the divergence of the non-plant mitochondrial line from other organisms. Other variations in the code correlate with the least stable codon-anticodon pairs.

show abstract

Prebiotic syntheses of purines and pyrimidines

Cited by 35 publications

References 40 publications

Comparative genomics of nucleotide metabolism: a tour to the past of the three cellular domains of life

Comparative genomics of nucleotide metabolism: a tour to the past of the three cellular domains of life

VUV photophysics and dissociative photoionization of pyrimidine, purine, imidazole and benzimidazole in the 7–18eV photon energy range

The Evolution of the Genetic Code Revisited

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About