The DOI matches its Crossref record; 2 of the 2 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
A Possible Primordial Peptide Cycle
Abstract
α-Amino acids can undergo peptide formation by activation with carbon monoxide (CO) under hot aqueous conditions in the presence of freshly coprecipitated colloidal (Fe,Ni)S. We now show that CO-driven peptide formation proceeds concomitantly with CO-driven, N-terminal peptide degradation by racemizing N-terminal hydantoin and urea derivatives to α-amino acids. This establishes a peptide cycle with closely related anabolic and catabolic segments. The hydantoin derivative is a purin-related heterocycle. The (Fe,Ni)S-dependent urea hydrolysis could have been the evolutionary precursor of the nickelenzyme urease. The results support the theory of a chemoautotrophic origin of life with a CO-driven, (Fe,Ni)S-dependent primordial metabolism.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Before enzymes and templates: theory of surface metabolism
Wächtershäuser, G. (1988) · Microbiological Reviews · doi:10.1128/mmbr.52.4.452-484.1988 · Cited by 1,242
Self-citationActivated Acetic Acid by Carbon Fixation on (Fe,Ni)S Under Primordial Conditions
Huber, C., & Wächtershäuser, G. (1997) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.276.5310.245 · Cited by 714
Self-citation
Cited by
Dynamic Combinatorial Chemistry
Corbett, P. T., Leclaire, J., Vial, L., West, K. R., Wietor, J.-L., Sanders, J. K. M., & Otto, S. (2006) · Chemical Reviews · doi:10.1021/cr020452p · Cited by 1,922
Prebiotic Systems Chemistry: New Perspectives for the Origins of Life
Ruiz-Mirazo, K., Briones, C., & de la Escosura, A. (2014) · Chemical Reviews · doi:10.1021/cr2004844 · Cited by 930
Limbach, L. K., Li, Y., Grass, R. N., Brunner, T. J., Hintermann, M. A., Muller, M., Gunther, D., & Stark, W. J. (2005) · Environmental Science & Technology · doi:10.1021/es051043o · Cited by 779
Ludlow, R. F., & Otto, S. (2008) · Chem. Soc. Rev. · doi:10.1039/b611921m · Cited by 592
Serpentinization as a source of energy at the origin of life
RUSSELL, M. J., HALL, A. J., & MARTIN, W. (2010) · Geobiology · doi:10.1111/j.1472-4669.2010.00249.x · Cited by 527
Metadata
- Authors
- Huber, C., Eisenreich, W., Hecht, S., & Wächtershäuser, G.
- Venue
- Science
- Published
- 2003-08-15
- Volume
- 301
- Issue
- 5635
- Pages
- 938-940
- ISSN
- 0036-8075 (ISSN-L)
- 1095-9203
- OpenAlex
- W2022725907
- Cited by
- 257
- References
- 2
- FWCI
- 7.93
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: A Possible Primordial Peptide Cycle. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1126/science.1086501
- The paper
- Huber, C., Eisenreich, W., Hecht, S., & Wächtershäuser, G. (2003). A Possible Primordial Peptide Cycle. Science. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1086501
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
