Explaining the controlled emergence and growth of molecular complexity at life’s origins is one of prebiotic chemistry’s grand challenges. Now, it has been shown that we can observe how the self-organization of a complex carbohydrate network can be modulated by its environment.
References
Orgel, L. E. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 97, 12503–12507 (2000).
Robinson, W. E., Daines, E., van Duppen, P., de Jong, T. & Huck, W. T. S. Nat. Chem. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-022-00956-7 (2022).
Butlerow, A. Justus Liebigs Ann. Chem. 120, 295–298 (1861).
Richert, C. Nat. Commun. 9, 5177 (2018).
Muchowska, K. B., Varma, S. J. & Moran, J. Chem. Rev. 120, 7708–7744 (2020).
Ricardo, A., Carrigan, M. A., Olcott, A. N. & Benner, S. A. Science 303, 196 (2004).
Lambert, J. B., Gurusamy-Thangavelu, S. A. & Ma, K. Science 327, 984–986 (2010).
Colón-Santos, S., Cooper, G. J. T. & Cronin, L. ChemSystemsChem 1, e1900014 (2019).
Breslow, R. Tetrahedron Lett. 1, 22–26 (1959).
Cafferty, B. J. et al. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 141, 8289–8295 (2019).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Dherbassy, Q., Muchowska, K.B. Complex networks at life’s origins. Nat. Chem. 14, 597–599 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-022-00962-9
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-022-00962-9
- Springer Nature Limited