Expeditious,Potentially Primordial,Aminoacylation of Nucleotides

摘要

In contemporary biochemistry,enzymatically synthesized,activated aminoacyl-tRNA esters(aa-tRNA)serve as substrates for'coded peptide synthesis by ribosomes,'1' and a major goal is to understand the evolutionary path through which this process arose.As a first step towards this goal,we have been looking to find a prebiotically plausible means for the aminoacylation of ribonucleotide 2'-/3'-hydroxy groups.A number of simple,potentially prebiotic,activated amino acid derivatives have been reported,most notably,N-carboxyan-hydrides(NCAs).