Nucleotide-mediated catalytic peptide synthesis from aminonitriles
Abstract
Aminonitriles are accessible from simple feedstock compounds and their hydrolysis offers an abiotic route to life’s amino acids on the early earth. However, controlled aqueous polymerisation of amino acids into peptides remains challenging. Here we show that peptides can be directly generated and elongated by aminonitriles when the latter are coupled to nucleotides as a phosphoramidate. Upon thiol catalysis and pH shifts, a series of selective reactivities drives iterative peptide bond formation in water. The high energy nitrile bond of aminonitriles circumvents amino acids’ need for concurrent activation chemistry in peptide elongation. Coupling the building blocks of life’s central biopolymers in this manner provides a pathway for early integration of peptides into biology.
Related
- Investigating the ‘Water Paradox’: Theoretical Evidence for Electric Field-Mediated Catalysis of Peptide Bond Formation
- Catalytic non-energetic formation of diverse peptides on cosmic dust under extraterrestrial conditions
- Catalytic formation of H2 on carbonaceous dust grains - implications for interstellar observations
- FastSpec : Fast and versatile stellar spectrum synthesis code
- Type Ia supernova population machine – I. A unified cosmological simulation–binary synthesis framework establishing non-universal delay-time distributions and cosmic progenitor-channel dominance crossover
BibTeX
@misc{ohlendorf2026nucleotidemediated,
title = {{Nucleotide-mediated catalytic peptide synthesis from aminonitriles}},
author = {Luis Ohlendorf and Jyoti Singh and Erica Park and Sofija Spric and Qian Zhang and Josh Maiklem and Daniel Whitaker and Matthew W. Powner and James Attwater},
howpublished = {ChemRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.26434/chemrxiv.15009745/v1},
url = {https://chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10.26434/chemrxiv.15009745/v1},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Nucleotide-mediated catalytic peptide synthesis from aminonitriles
AU - Luis Ohlendorf
AU - Jyoti Singh
AU - Erica Park
AU - Sofija Spric
AU - Qian Zhang
AU - Josh Maiklem
AU - Daniel Whitaker
AU - Matthew W. Powner
AU - James Attwater
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/01
PB - ChemRxiv
DO - 10.26434/chemrxiv.15009745/v1
UR - https://chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10.26434/chemrxiv.15009745/v1
AB - Aminonitriles are accessible from simple feedstock compounds and their hydrolysis offers an abiotic route to life’s amino acids on the early earth. However, controlled aqueous polymerisation of amino acids into peptides remains challenging. Here we show that peptides can be directly generated and elongated by aminonitriles when the latter are coupled to nucleotides as a phosphoramidate. Upon thiol catalysis and pH shifts, a series of selective reactivities drives iterative peptide bond formation in water. The high energy nitrile bond of aminonitriles circumvents amino acids’ need for concurrent activation chemistry in peptide elongation. Coupling the building blocks of life’s central biopolymers in this manner provides a pathway for early integration of peptides into biology.
ER -