Adam J. Coggins, M. Powner
Oct 10, 2016
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2
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Journal
Nature Chemistry
Abstract
Phosphoenol pyruvate is the highest-energy phosphate found in living organisms and is one of the most versatile molecules in metabolism. Consequently, it is an essential intermediate in a wide variety of biochemical pathways, including carbon fixation, the shikimate pathway, substrate-level phosphorylation, gluconeogenesis and glycolysis. Triose glycolysis (generation of ATP from glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate via phosphoenol pyruvate) is among the most central and highly conserved pathways in metabolism. Here, we demonstrate the efficient and robust synthesis of phosphoenol pyruvate from prebiotic nucleotide precursors, glycolaldehyde and glyceraldehyde. Furthermore, phosphoenol pyruvate is derived within an α-phosphorylation controlled reaction network that gives access to glyceric acid 2-phosphate, glyceric acid 3-phosphate, phosphoserine and pyruvate. Our results demonstrate that the key components of a core metabolic pathway central to energy transduction and amino acid, sugar, nucleotide and lipid biosyntheses can be reconstituted in high yield under mild, prebiotically plausible conditions. Chemical reconstitution of the triose glycolysis pathway is controlled by α-phosphorylation and provides a generational link between prebiotic ribonucleotide synthesis, triose glycolysis and serine metabolism. Now, research suggests that unification of nucleotide synthesis and triose metabolism may have been a fundamentally important step towards the origins of life.