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TiO(2)-catalyzed synthesis of sugars from formaldehyde in extraterrestrial impacts on the early Earth

Recent synthetic efforts aimed at reconstructing the beginning of life on our planet point at the plausibility of scenarios fueled by extraterrestrial energy sources. In the current work we show that beyond nucleobases the sugar components of the first informational polymers can be synthesized in th...

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Autores principales: Civiš, Svatopluk, Szabla, Rafał, Szyja, Bartłomiej M., Smykowski, Daniel, Ivanek, Ondřej, Knížek, Antonín, Kubelík, Petr, Šponer, Jiří, Ferus, Martin, Šponer, Judit E.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4793247/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26979666
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep23199
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author Civiš, Svatopluk
Szabla, Rafał
Szyja, Bartłomiej M.
Smykowski, Daniel
Ivanek, Ondřej
Knížek, Antonín
Kubelík, Petr
Šponer, Jiří
Ferus, Martin
Šponer, Judit E.
author_facet Civiš, Svatopluk
Szabla, Rafał
Szyja, Bartłomiej M.
Smykowski, Daniel
Ivanek, Ondřej
Knížek, Antonín
Kubelík, Petr
Šponer, Jiří
Ferus, Martin
Šponer, Judit E.
author_sort Civiš, Svatopluk
collection PubMed
description Recent synthetic efforts aimed at reconstructing the beginning of life on our planet point at the plausibility of scenarios fueled by extraterrestrial energy sources. In the current work we show that beyond nucleobases the sugar components of the first informational polymers can be synthesized in this way. We demonstrate that a laser-induced high-energy chemistry combined with TiO(2) catalysis readily produces a mixture of pentoses, among them ribose, arabinose and xylose. This chemistry might be highly relevant to the Late Heavy Bombardment period of Earth’s history about 4–3.85 billion years ago. In addition, we present an in-depth theoretical analysis of the most challenging step of the reaction pathway, i.e., the TiO(2)-catalyzed dimerization of formaldehyde leading to glycolaldehyde.
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spelling pubmed-47932472016-03-16 TiO(2)-catalyzed synthesis of sugars from formaldehyde in extraterrestrial impacts on the early Earth Civiš, Svatopluk Szabla, Rafał Szyja, Bartłomiej M. Smykowski, Daniel Ivanek, Ondřej Knížek, Antonín Kubelík, Petr Šponer, Jiří Ferus, Martin Šponer, Judit E. Sci Rep Article Recent synthetic efforts aimed at reconstructing the beginning of life on our planet point at the plausibility of scenarios fueled by extraterrestrial energy sources. In the current work we show that beyond nucleobases the sugar components of the first informational polymers can be synthesized in this way. We demonstrate that a laser-induced high-energy chemistry combined with TiO(2) catalysis readily produces a mixture of pentoses, among them ribose, arabinose and xylose. This chemistry might be highly relevant to the Late Heavy Bombardment period of Earth’s history about 4–3.85 billion years ago. In addition, we present an in-depth theoretical analysis of the most challenging step of the reaction pathway, i.e., the TiO(2)-catalyzed dimerization of formaldehyde leading to glycolaldehyde. Nature Publishing Group 2016-03-16 /pmc/articles/PMC4793247/ /pubmed/26979666 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep23199 Text en Copyright © 2016, Macmillan Publishers Limited http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
spellingShingle Article
Civiš, Svatopluk
Szabla, Rafał
Szyja, Bartłomiej M.
Smykowski, Daniel
Ivanek, Ondřej
Knížek, Antonín
Kubelík, Petr
Šponer, Jiří
Ferus, Martin
Šponer, Judit E.
TiO(2)-catalyzed synthesis of sugars from formaldehyde in extraterrestrial impacts on the early Earth
title TiO(2)-catalyzed synthesis of sugars from formaldehyde in extraterrestrial impacts on the early Earth
title_full TiO(2)-catalyzed synthesis of sugars from formaldehyde in extraterrestrial impacts on the early Earth
title_fullStr TiO(2)-catalyzed synthesis of sugars from formaldehyde in extraterrestrial impacts on the early Earth
title_full_unstemmed TiO(2)-catalyzed synthesis of sugars from formaldehyde in extraterrestrial impacts on the early Earth
title_short TiO(2)-catalyzed synthesis of sugars from formaldehyde in extraterrestrial impacts on the early Earth
title_sort tio(2)-catalyzed synthesis of sugars from formaldehyde in extraterrestrial impacts on the early earth
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4793247/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26979666
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep23199
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