Possible prebiotic catalysts formed from adenine and aldehyde

Careful examination of the present metabolism and in vitro selection of var ious catalytic RNAs strongly support the "RNA World" hypothesis of the orig in of life. However, in this scenario, the difficult prebiotic synthesis of ribose and consequently of nucleotides remain a major problem. In order to overcome this problem and obtain nucleoside analogs, we are investigating reactions of the nucleic acid base, adenine 1, with different aldehydes und er presumably prebiotic conditions. In the reaction of adenine and pyruvald ehyde 2 in water, we report here the formation in high yield of two isomeri c products. These compounds possessing alcohols functions as nucleosides re sult from condensation of two molecules of pyruvaldehyde on the 6-amino gro up of one adenine molecule. Their catalytic activities in the model hydroly sis of p-nitrophenylesters appeared interesting in the search of prebiotic catalysts. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.