Origins of Life: The Primal Self-Organization

1. Energetics of the First Life
Armen Y. Mulkidjanian

2. A Hypothesis for a Unified Mechanism of Formation and Enantioenrichment of Polyols and Aldaric, Aldonic, Amino, Hydroxy and Sugar Acids in Carbonaceous Chondrites
H. James Cleaves

3. On the Origin of Phosphorylated Biomolecules
Matthew A. Pasek, Terence P. Kee

4. Abiotic Photosynthesis: From Prebiotic Chemistry to Metabolism
Marcelo I. Guzman

5. Salt-Induced Peptide Formation in Chemical Evolution: Building Blocks Before RNA – Potential of Peptide Splicing Reactions
Daniel Fitz, Thomas Jakschitz, Bernd M. Rode

6. Scenario of the Primary Pump: Emergence and Operation of an Automatic Engine to Generate Primordial Peptides and Beyond Nucleic Acids
Auguste Commeyras

7. The Relevance of Peptides That Bind FeS Clusters, Phosphate Groups, Cations or Anions for Prebiotic Evolution
E. James Milner-White

8. Peptide-Dominated Vesicles: Bacterial Internal Membrane Compartments as Model Systems for Prebiotic Evolution
James N. Sturgis

9. Nicotinamide Coenzyme Synthesis: A Case of Ribonucleotide Emergence or a Byproduct of the RNA World?
Nadia Raffaelli

10. On Alternative Biological Scenarios for the Evolutionary Transitions to DNA and Biological Protein Synthesis
Anthony M. Poole

11. Two RNA Worlds: Toward the Origin of Replication, Genes, Recombination, and Repair
Dirk-Henner Lankenau

12. Integrative Perspectives: In Quest of a Coherent Framework for Origins of Life on Earth
Richard Egel

Nyckelord: Life Sciences, Evolutionary Biology, Biochemistry, general, Paleontology, Nucleic Acid Chemistry, Protein Science, Cell Biology