School of Integrative Biological & Chemical Sciences Faculty Publications
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
6-10-2026
Abstract
To address the chemistry responsible for life’s emergence, we examine the simple chemicals accessible on early Earth and the processes that could have transformed them. We focus on carbon reduction as a process central to the direct precursors of life. Two main approaches for the emergence of life’s building blocks and their associated functions are discussed. One approach investigates chemical routes for forming life’s building blocks via processes that worked differently from those of extant life, referred to as “unrestricted” prebiotic chemistries. The other approach establishes a direct mechanistic connection between prebiotic building blocks and extant biochemistry, referred to as “lifelike” prebiotic chemistries. Significant gaps remain in our understanding of early Earth’s conditions, which makes it difficult to constrain the possible locations and mechanisms of life’s emergence and the sources of precursors. Although numerous differences remain between the main origin-of-life hypotheses, consideration of the geochemistry of carbon reduction is a common denominator of these historically divided hypotheses.
Recommended Citation
Camprubi, Eloi, Ben K. D. Pearce, and Martina Preiner. "Terrestrial Abiotic Synthesis of Simple Precursor Molecules Starting from Two Approaches: The Universality of Carbon Reduction." Astrobiology 26, no. 7-8 (2026): 578-88. https://doi.org/10.1177/15311074261454245
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
First Page
578
Last Page
588
Publication Title
Astrobiology
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1177/15311074261454245
Included in
Biochemistry Commons, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Commons, Environmental Health Commons
Comments
© The Author(s). This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).