For decades, chemists considered a chemical pathway known as the formose reaction the only route for producing sugars essential for life to begin, but more recent research has called into question the plausibility of such thinking. Now a group from The Scripps Research Institute has proven an alternative pathway to those sugars called the glyoxylate scenario, which may push the field of pre-life chemistry past the formose reaction hurdle.
The team is reporting the results of their highly successful experiments online ahead of print in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
"We were working in uncharted territory," says Ramanarayanan ("Ram") Krishnamurthy, a Scripps Research chemist who led the research, "We didn't know what to expect but the glyoxylate scenario with respect to formation of carbohydrates is not a hypothesis anymore, it's an experimental fact."
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