Overview

• University College London researchers reported that amino acids activated as thioesters spontaneously aminoacylated RNA in water at neutral pH.
• Double-stranded RNA directed attachment to the biologically relevant 3' terminus, echoing modern tRNA charging.
• The same reaction system formed peptide bonds from aminoacylated RNA, demonstrating a contiguous route from activated amino acids to short peptides.
• The activation relied on pantetheine-based thioesters, a sulfur chemistry the team previously showed could arise under early Earth–like conditions.
• The findings bridge the RNA-world and thioester-world hypotheses, with sequence-specific pairing—the basis of the genetic code—flagged as the key next challenge.