Joshua Davisson

Jul 29, 2024 | biorxiv.org | Joshua Davisson |Evan Kalb |Isaac Knudson |Alanna Schepartz

AbstractLife as we know it depends on the homochirality of nucleic acids and proteins. However, there is no widely accepted explanation for why life uses only D-sugars for nucleic acids and L-amino acids for proteins. Here we demonstrate a prebiotically plausible method of nonenzymatic aminoacylation in a water ice-eutectic phase. These reactions produce high yields of aminoacyl-tRNAs, which are active in translation.