Recent synthetic efforts aimed at reconstructing the beginning of life on our planet point at the plausibility of scenarios fueled by extraterrestrial energy sources. In the current work we show that beyond nucleobases the sugar components of the first informational polymers can be synthesized in this way. We demonstrate that a laser-induced high-energy chemistry combined with TiO2 catalysis readily produces a mixture of pentoses, among them ribose, arabinose and xylose. This chemistry might be highly relevant to the Late Heavy Bombardment period of Earth's history about 4-3.85 billion years ago. In addition, we present an in-depth theoretical analysis of the most challenging step of the reaction pathway, i.e., the TiO2-catalyzed dimerization of formaldehyde leading to glycolaldehyde.

CEITEC Central European Institute of Technology Masaryk University Campus Bohunice Kamenice 5 CZ 62500 Brno Czech Republic

Division of Fuels Chemistry and Technology Faculty of Chemistry Wrocław University of Technology Gdańska 7 9 50 344 Wrocław Poland

Faculty of Mechanical and Power Engineering Wrocław University of Technology Ul Wybrzeże Wyspiańskiego 27 50 370 Wrocław

Inorganic Materials Chemistry Department of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry Eindhoven University of Technology Den Dolech 2 5612 AZ Eindhoven The Netherlands

Institute of Biophysics Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic Královopolská 135 CZ 612 65 Brno Czech Republic

Institute of Physics Czech Academy of Sciences Na Slovance 2 182 21 Prague 8 Czech Republic

J Heyrovský Institute of Physical Chemistry Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic Dolejškova 3 CZ 182 23 Prague 8 Czech Republic

Sci Rep. 2016 Jun 20;6:27962. doi: 10.1038/srep27962. PubMed

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Infrared Spectra of Small Radicals for Exoplanetary Spectroscopy: OH, NH, CN and CH: The State of Current Knowledge