OoL digest — February 28st edition

Biochemistry

Synthesis of Phospholipids Under Plausible Prebiotic Conditions and Analogies with Phospholipid Biochemistry for Origin of Life Studies – Fiore et al. – Astrobiology

Amino Acid Specificity of Ancestral Aminoacyl-tRNA Synthetase Prior to the Last Universal Common Ancestor Commonote commonote – Furukawa et al. – Journal of Molecular Evolution

Scaling laws in enzyme function reveal a new kind of biochemical universality – Gagler et al. – Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Reconstruction of nitrogenase predecessors suggests origin from maturase-like proteins – Garcia et al. – Genome Biology and Evolution

In vitro evolution reveals non-cationic protein-RNA interaction mediated by metal ions – Giacobelli et al. – Molecular Biology and Evolution

Micellar Composition Affects Lipid Accretion Kinetics in Molecular Dynamics Simulations – Kahana et al. – preprint

Chirality in Organic and Mineral Systems: A Review of Reactivity and Alteration Processes Relevant to Prebiotic Chemistry and Life Detection Missions – Lee et al. – Symmetry

Cyanide as a primordial reductant enables a protometabolic reductive glyoxylate pathway – Yadav et al. – Nature Chemistry

Bioinformatics

How evolution builds up complexity?: In vitro evolution approaches to witness complexification in artificial molecular replication systems – Furubayashi et al. – Biophysics and Physicobiology

Biology

Origin of eukaryotes: What can be learned from the first successfully isolated Asgard archaeon – Albers et al. – Faculty Reviews

An estimate of the deepest branches of the tree of life from ancient vertically-evolving genes – Moody et al. – eLife

Planetary Science

Orbital properties and implications for the initiation of plate tectonics and planetary habitability – Anand – preprint