Cyanamide as a prebiotic phosphate activating agent – catalysis by simple 2-oxoacid salts

Cyanamide is a prebiotically plausible compound that has previously been invoked as a phosphate activating agent. However, its reactions with phosphate monoesters are very slow and tend to be low yielding. We now report a fast and efficient phosphate activation reaction using cyanamide in the presence of glyoxylate or pyruvate. These simple 2-oxoacid salts are shown to function as catalysts and in an optimised system, adenosine-3′-phosphate was converted to adenosine-2′,3′-cyclic phosphate in 95% yield.