Phosphorylation, Oligomerization and Self-assembly in Water Under Potential Prebiotic Conditions

Prebiotic phosphorylation of (pre)biological substrates under aqueous conditions is a critical step in the origins of life. Previous investigations have had limited success and/or require unique environments which are incompatible with the subsequent generation of the corresponding oligomers or higher order structures. Here we demonstrate that diamidophosphate (DAP), a plausible prebiotic agent produced from trimetaphosphate, efficiently (amido)phosphorylates a wide variety of (pre)biological building blocks (nucleosides/tides, amino acids, and lipid precursors) under aqueous (solution/paste) conditions, without the need of a condensing agent. Significantly, higher order structures (oligonucleotides, peptides and liposomes) are formed under the same phosphorylation reaction conditions. This plausible prebiotic phosphorylation process under similar reaction conditions could enable the systems chemistry of the three classes of (pre)biologically relevant molecules, and their oligomers, in a single-pot aqueous environment.