A physicochemical orthophosphate cycle via a kinetically stable thermodynamically activated intermediate enables mild prebiotic phosphorylations

A Prebiotic Pathway to Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide

Enzymes play a fundamental role in cellular metabolism. A wide range of enzymes require the presence of complementary coenzymes and cofactors to function properly. While coenzymes are believed to have been part of the last universal ancestor (LUCA) or have been present even earlier, the syntheses of crucial coenzymes like the redox-active coenzymes flavin adenine dinucleotide (FAD) or nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) remain challenging. Here, we present a pathway to NAD+ under prebiotic conditions starting with ammonia, cyanoacetaldehyde, prop-2-ynal and sugar-forming precursors, yielding in situ the nicotinamide riboside. Regioselective phosphorylation and water stable light activated adenosine monophosphate derivatives allow for topographically and irradiation-controlled formation of NAD+. Our findings indicate that NAD+, a coenzyme vital to life, can be formed non-enzymatically from simple organic feedstock molecules via photocatalytic activation under prebiotically plausible early Earth conditions in a continuous process under aqueous conditions.

Evolutionary Abilities of Minimalistic Physicochemical Models of Life Processes

The ability of living organisms to persist, grow, evolve and invade environments seemingly challenges physical laws. Emerging Autonomous Systems representing autocatalytic cycles constituted of energized components in a state of Dynamic Kinetic Stability feature some of these properties. These simple theoretical models can grow, can be transferred but need an initiation to emerge and can collapse. Moreover, they can undergo kinetic selection in a way consistent with Darwinian behaviour, though they lack the ability to undergo change. The mere existence of these systems and their open-ended growth potential are proposed to constitute a transmissible factor of a non-coded kind. The onset and selection of epigenetic factors may therefore have preceded that of genetic polymers. Here is addressed the question of how these systems may arise from the diversity exhibited by abiotic organic matter, sometimes associated with intractable mixtures, which may actually be useful in providing initiators. The Darwinian description of evolution may therefore be merged without critical discontinuity within an origin scenario. Accordingly, such a theory would rests solely on physicochemical laws beginning with the potential of emerging autonomous systems to compete and invade the space dimension, and to further develop along other available dimensions including variability and, possibly, cognition.

How Droplets Can Accelerate Reactions─Coacervate Protocells as Catalytic Microcompartments

ConspectusCoacervates are droplets formed by liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) and are often used as model protocells-primitive cell-like compartments that could have aided the emergence of life. Their continued presence as membraneless organelles in modern cells gives further credit to their relevance. The local physicochemical environment inside coacervates is distinctly different from the surrounding dilute solution and offers an interesting microenvironment for prebiotic reactions. Coacervates can selectively take up reactants and enhance their effective concentration, stabilize products, destabilize reactants and lower transition states, and can therefore play a similar role as micellar catalysts in providing rate enhancement and selectivity in reaction outcome. Rate enhancement and selectivity must have been essential for the origins of life by enabling chemical reactions to occur at appreciable rates and overcoming competition from hydrolysis.In this Accounts, we dissect the mechanisms by which coacervate protocells can accelerate reactions and provide selectivity. These mechanisms can similarly be exploited by membraneless organelles to control cellular processes. First, coacervates can affect the local concentration of reactants and accelerate reactions by copartitioning of reactants or exclusion of a product or inhibitor. Second, the local environment inside the coacervate can change the energy landscape for reactions taking place inside the droplets. The coacervate is more apolar than the surrounding solution and often rich in charged moieties, which can affect the stability of reactants, transition states and products. The crowded nature of the droplets can favor complexation of large molecules such as ribozymes. Their locally different proton and water activity can facilitate reactions involving a (de)protonation step, condensation reactions and reactions that are sensitive to hydrolysis. Not only the coacervate core, but also the surface can accelerate reactions and provides an interesting site for chemical reactions with gradients in pH, water activity and charge. The coacervate is often rich in catalytic amino acids and can localize catalysts like divalent metal ions, leading to further rate enhancement inside the droplets. Lastly, these coacervate properties can favor certain reaction pathways, and thereby give selectivity over the reaction outcome.These mechanisms are further illustrated with a case study on ribozyme reactions inside coacervates, for which there is a fine balance between concentration and reactivity that can be tuned by the coacervate composition. Furthermore, coacervates can both catalyze ribozyme reactions and provide product selectivity, demonstrating that coacervates could have functioned as enzyme-like catalytic microcompartments at the origins of life.

Active droplets through enzyme-free, dynamic phosphorylation

Life continuously transduces energy to perform critical functions using energy stored in reactive molecules like ATP or NADH. ATP dynamically phosphorylates active sites on proteins and thereby regulates their function. Inspired by such machinery, regulating supramolecular functions using energy stored in reactive molecules has gained traction. Enzyme-free, synthetic systems that use dynamic phosphorylation to regulate supramolecular processes have not yet been reported, to our knowledge. Here, we show an enzyme-free reaction cycle that consumes the phosphorylating agent monoamidophosphate by transiently phosphorylating histidine and histidine-containing peptides. The phosphorylated species are labile and deactivate through hydrolysis. The cycle exhibits versatility and tunability, allowing for the dynamic phosphorylation of multiple precursors with a tunable half-life. Notably, we show the resulting phosphorylated products can regulate the peptide's phase separation, leading to active droplets that require the continuous conversion of fuel to sustain. The reaction cycle will be valuable as a model for biological phosphorylation but can also offer insights into protocell formation.

A Prebiotic Precursor to Life's Phosphate Transfer System with an ATP Analog and Histidyl Peptide Organocatalysts

Biochemistry is dependent upon enzyme catalysts accelerating key reactions. At the origin of life, prebiotic chemistry must have incorporated catalytic reactions. While this would have yielded much needed amplification of certain reaction products, it would come at the possible cost of rapidly depleting the high energy molecules that acted as chemical fuels. Biochemistry solves this problem by combining kinetically stable and thermodynamically activated molecules (e.g., ATP) with enzyme catalysts. Here, we demonstrate a prebiotic phosphate transfer system involving an ATP analog (imidazole phosphate) and histidyl peptides, which function as organocatalytic enzyme analogs. We demonstrate that histidyl peptides catalyze phosphorylations via a phosphorylated histidyl intermediate. We integrate these histidyl-catalyzed phosphorylations into a complete prebiotic scenario whereby inorganic phosphate is incorporated into organic compounds though physicochemical wet-dry cycles. Our work demonstrates a plausible system for the catalyzed production of phosphorylated compounds on the early Earth and how organocatalytic peptides, as enzyme precursors, could have played an important role in this.

Nonequilibrium Wet-Dry Cycling Acts as a Catalyst for Chemical Reactions

Recent experimental studies suggest that wet-dry cycles and coexisting phases can each strongly alter chemical processes. The mechanisms of why and to what degree chemical processes are altered when subjected to evaporation and condensation are unclear. To close this gap, we developed a theoretical framework for nondilute chemical reactions subject to nonequilibrium conditions of evaporation and condensation. We find that such conditions can change the half-time of the product's yield by more than an order of magnitude, depending on the substrate-solvent interaction. We show that the cycle frequency strongly affects the chemical turnover when the system is maintained out of equilibrium by wet-dry cycles. There exists a resonance behavior in the cycle frequency where the turnover is maximal. This resonance behavior enables wet-dry cycles to select specific chemical reactions, suggesting a potential mechanism for chemical evolution in prebiotic soups at early Earth.

A single phosphorylation mechanism in early metabolism - the case of phosphoenolpyruvate

Phosphorylation is thought to be one of the fundamental reactions for the emergence of metabolism. Nearly all enzymatic phosphorylation reactions in the anabolic core of microbial metabolism act on carboxylates to give acyl phosphates, with a notable exception - the phosphorylation of pyruvate to phosphoenolpyruvate (PEP), which involves an enolate. We wondered whether an ancestral mechanism for the phosphorylation of pyruvate to PEP could also have involved carboxylate phosphorylation rather than the modern enzymatic form. The phosphorylation of pyruvate with P4O10 as a model phosphorylating agent was found to indeed occur via carboxylate phosphorylation, as verified by mechanistic studies using model substrates, time course experiments, liquid and solid-state NMR spectroscopy, and DFT calculations. The in situ generated acyl phosphate subsequently undergoes an intramolecular phosphoryl transfer to yield PEP. A single phosphorylation mechanism acting on carboxylates appears sufficient to initiate metabolic networks that include PEP, strengthening the case that metabolism emerged from self-organized chemistry.

Ring Opening of Glycerol Cyclic Phosphates Leads to a Diverse Array of Potentially Prebiotic Phospholipids

Phospholipids are the primary constituents of cell membranes across all domains of life, but how and when phospholipids appeared on early Earth remains unknown. Pressingly, most prebiotic syntheses of complex phospholipids rely upon substrates not yet shown to have been available on early Earth. Here, we describe potentially prebiotic syntheses of a diverse array of complex phospholipids and their building blocks. First, we show that choline could have been produced on early Earth by stepwise N-methylation of ethanolamine. Second, taking a systems chemistry approach, we demonstrate that the intrinsically activated glycerol-2,3-cyclic phosphate undergoes ring opening with combinations of prebiotic amino alcohols to yield complex phospholipid headgroups. Importantly, this pathway selects for the formation of 2-amino alcohol-bearing phospholipid headgroups and enables the accumulation of their natural regioisomers. Finally, we show that the dry-state ring opening of cyclic lysophosphatidic acids leads to a range of self-assembling lysophospholipids. Our results provide new prebiotic routes to key intermediates on the way toward modern phospholipids and illuminate the potential origin and evolution of cell membranes.

On the Emergence of Autonomous Chemical Systems through Dissipation Kinetics

This work addresses the kinetic requirements for compensating the entropic cost of self-organization and natural selection, thereby revealing a fundamental principle in biology. Metabolic and evolutionary features of life cannot therefore be separated from an origin of life perspective. Growth, self-organization, evolution and dissipation processes need to be metabolically coupled and fueled by low-entropy energy harvested from the environment. The evolutionary process requires a reproduction cycle involving out-of-equilibrium intermediates and kinetic barriers that prevent the reproductive cycle from proceeding in reverse. Model analysis leads to the unexpectedly simple relationship that the system should be fed energy with a potential exceeding a value related to the ratio of the generation time to the transition state lifetime, thereby enabling a process mimicking natural selection to take place. Reproducing life's main features, in particular its Darwinian behavior, therefore requires satisfying constraints that relate to time and energy. Irreversible reaction cycles made only of unstable entities reproduce some of these essential features, thereby offering a physical/chemical basis for the possible emergence of autonomy. Such Emerging Autonomous Systems (EASs) are found to be capable of maintaining and reproducing their kind through the transmission of a stable kinetic state, thereby offering a physical/chemical basis for what could be deemed an epigenetic process.

Enhancing Prebiotic Phosphorylation and Modulating the Regioselectivity of Nucleosides with Diamidophosphate†

Among the many prebiotic phosphorylation chemistries investigated, diamidophosphate (DAP) has shown promising potential for nucleoside phosphorylation. Herein, we show that DAP's phosphorylation capability is enhanced significantly (up to 90%) in wet-dry cycles by a range of prebiotically plausible pHs (6-10) and temperatures (up to 80 °C) in the presence of additives such as formamide, cyanamide, urea, guanidine, 2-aminoimidazole, and hydantoin. For ribonucleosides, the main products are the 2',3'-cyclic phosphates along with the corresponding 2'- and 3'-phosphates, while deoxyribonucleosides form 5'- and 3'-phosphates, the ratios of which are affected by cycles and the presence and nature of the additives. A simple change of temperature to 80 °C with additives leads to higher conversion yields (≈80-90%) with an increased level of 5'-phosphorylation (≈40-49%). This demonstration of enhancing and controlling the regioselectivity of DAP-mediated phosphorylation by a range of additives and conditions potentiates transitioning to the search for more efficient catalysts, enabling regiospecific phosphorylations and oligonucleotide formation in the same milieu and setting.

(Photoredox) Organocatalysis in the Emergence of Life: Discovery, Applications, and Molecular Evolution

ConspectusLife as we know it is built on complex and perfectly interlocking processes that have evolved over millions of years through evolutionary optimization processes. The emergence of life from nonliving matter and the evolution of such highly efficient systems therefore constitute an enormous synthetic and systems chemistry challenge. Advances in supramolecular and systems chemistry are opening new perspectives that provide insights into living and self-sustaining reaction networks as precursors for life. However, the ab initio synthesis of such a system requires the possibility of autonomous optimization of catalytic properties and, consequently, of an evolutionary system at the molecular level. In this Account, we present our discovery of the formation of substituted imidazolidine-4-thiones (photoredox) organocatalysts from simple prebiotic building blocks such as aldehydes and ketones under Strecker reaction conditions with ammonia and cyanides in the presence of hydrogen sulfide. The necessary aldehydes are formed from CO2 and hydrogen under prebiotically plausible meteoritic or volcanic iron-particle catalysis in the atmosphere of the early Earth. Remarkably, the investigated imidazolidine-4-thiones undergo spontaneous resolution by conglomerate crystallization, opening a pathway for symmetry breaking, chiral amplification, and enantioselective organocatalysis. These imidazolidine-4-thiones enable α-alkylations of aldehydes and ketones by photoredox organocatalysis. Therefore, these photoredox organocatalysts are able to modify their aldehyde building blocks, which leads in an evolutionary process to mutated second-generation and third-generation catalysts. In our experimental studies, we found that this mutation can occur not only by new formation of the imidazolidine core structure of the catalyst from modified aldehyde building blocks or by continuous supply from a pool of available building blocks but also by a dynamic exchange of the carbonyl moiety in ring position 2 of the imidazolidine moiety. Remarkably, it can be shown that by incorporating aldehyde building blocks from their environment, the imidazolidine-4-thiones are able to change and adapt to altering environmental conditions without undergoing the entire formation process. The selection of the mutated catalysts is then based on the different catalytic activities in the modification of the aldehyde building blocks and on the catalysis of subsequent processes that can lead to the formation of molecular reaction networks as progenitors for cellular processes. We were able to show that these imidazolidine-4-thiones not only enable α-alkylations but also facilitate other important transformations, such as the selective phosphorylation of nucleosides to nucleotides as a key step leading to the oligomerization to RNA and DNA. It can therefore be expected that evolutionary processes have already taken place on a small molecular level and have thus developed chemical tools that change over time, representing a hidden layer on the path to enzymatically catalyzed biochemical processes.

Metal/ADP Complexes Promote Phosphorylation of Ribonucleotides

Under enzyme catalysis, adenosine triphosphate (ATP) transfers a phosphoryl group to canonical ribonucleotide diphosphates (NDPs) to form ribonucleotide triphosphates (NTPs), the direct biosynthetic precursors to RNA. However, it remains unclear whether the phosphorylation of NDPs could have occurred in water before enzymes existed and why an adenosine derivative, rather than another canonical NTP, typically performs this function. Here, we show that adenosine diphosphate (ADP) in the presence of Fe3+ or Al3+ promotes phosphoryl transfer from acetyl phosphate to all canonical NDPs to produce their corresponding NTP in water at room temperature and in the absence of enzymes. No other NDPs were found to promote phosphorylation, giving insight into why adenosine derivatives specifically became used for this purpose in biology. The metal-ADP complexes also promote phosphoryl transfer to ribonucleoside monophosphates (NMPs) to form a mixture of the corresponding NDPs and NTPs, albeit less efficiently. This work represents a rare example in which a single nucleotide carries out a function critical to biology without enzymes. ADP-metal complexes may have played an important role in nucleotide phosphorylation in prebiotic chemistry.

Dynamic Environmental Conditions Affect the Composition of a Model Prebiotic Reaction Network

Prebiotic environments are dynamic, containing a range of periodic and aperiodic variations in reaction conditions. However, the impact of the temporal dynamics of environmental conditions upon prebiotic chemical reaction networks has not been investigated. Here, we demonstrate how the magnitude and rate of temporal fluctuations of the catalysts Ca²⁺ and hydroxide control the product distributions of the formose reaction. Surprisingly, the product compositions of the formose reaction under dynamic conditions deviate significantly from those under steady state conditions. We attribute these compositional changes to the non-uniform propagation of fluctuations through the network, thereby shaping reaction outcomes. An examination of temporal concentration patterns showed that collections of compounds responded collectively to perturbations, indicating that key gating reactions branching from the Breslow cycle may be important responsive features of the formose reaction. Our findings show how the compositions of prebiotic reaction networks were shaped by sequential environmental events, illustrating the necessity for considering the temporal traits of prebiotic environments that supported the origin of life.

Abiotic synthesis with plausible emergence for primitive phospholipid in aqueous microdroplets

Phospholipids are the protective layer of modern cells, but it is challenging for the formation of phospholipids that require a simple abiotic synthesis before the advent of primitive cells. Here, we reported the abiotic synthesis for lysophosphatidic acids (LPAs) with prebiotically plausible reactants in aqueous microdroplets under ambient conditions. The LPAs formation is carried out by fusing two microdroplets streams: one contains glycerol and pyrophosphate in water and the other one contains fatty acids in acetonitrile. Compared with the bulk solution, LPAs were generated in microdroplets without the addition of catalyst and heating. Conditions of reactant concentrations and microdroplet size varied and suggested that LPAs formation occurred near or at the microdroplet surface. The LPAs formation also showed chemoselective toward on chain-length of fatty acids. Finally, the formation of LPAs underwent two-step reactions with glycerol phosphorylation eliminating one water molecule followed by esterification with fatty acids. These results also implicated that pyrophosphate functioned as both catalysts and precursors in prebiotic LPAs synthesis. The approach using fusion aqueous microdroplets has desirable features in studying the substance exchange and interaction in atmosphere.

Phosphorylation in liquid sulfur dioxide under prebiotically plausible conditions

In nature, organophosphates provide key functions such as information storage and transport, structural tasks, and energy transfer. Since condensations are unfavourable in water and nucleophilic attack at phosphate is kinetically inhibited, various abiogenesis hypotheses for the formation of organophosphate are discussed. Recently, the application of phosphites as phosphorylation agent showed promising results. However, elevated temperatures and additional reaction steps are required to obtain organophosphates. Here we show that in liquid sulfur dioxide, which acts as solvent and oxidant, efficient organophosphate formation is enabled. Phosphorous acid yields up to 32.6% 5' nucleoside monophosphate, 3.6% 5' nucleoside diphosphate, and the formation of nucleoside triphosphates and dinucleotides in a single reaction step at room temperature. In addition to the phosphorylation of organic compounds, we observed diserine formation. Thus, we suggest volcanic environments as reaction sites for biopolymer formation on Early Earth. Because of the simple recyclability of sulfur dioxide, the reaction is also interesting for synthesis chemistry.

A prebiotic basis for ATP as the universal energy currency

ATP is universally conserved as the principal energy currency in cells, driving metabolism through phosphorylation and condensation reactions. Such deep conservation suggests that ATP arose at an early stage of biochemical evolution. Yet purine synthesis requires 6 phosphorylation steps linked to ATP hydrolysis. This autocatalytic requirement for ATP to synthesize ATP implies the need for an earlier prebiotic ATP equivalent, which could drive protometabolism before purine synthesis. Why this early phosphorylating agent was replaced, and specifically with ATP rather than other nucleoside triphosphates, remains a mystery. Here, we show that the deep conservation of ATP might reflect its prebiotic chemistry in relation to another universally conserved intermediate, acetyl phosphate (AcP), which bridges between thioester and phosphate metabolism by linking acetyl CoA to the substrate-level phosphorylation of ADP. We confirm earlier results showing that AcP can phosphorylate ADP to ATP at nearly 20% yield in water in the presence of Fe3+ ions. We then show that Fe3+ and AcP are surprisingly favoured. A wide range of prebiotically relevant ions and minerals failed to catalyse ADP phosphorylation. From a panel of prebiotic phosphorylating agents, only AcP, and to a lesser extent carbamoyl phosphate, showed any significant phosphorylating potential. Critically, AcP did not phosphorylate any other nucleoside diphosphate. We use these data, reaction kinetics, and molecular dynamic simulations to infer a possible mechanism. Our findings might suggest that the reason ATP is universally conserved across life is that its formation is chemically favoured in aqueous solution under mild prebiotic conditions.

A Nonenzymatic Analog of Pyrimidine Nucleobase Biosynthesis

Metabolic theories for the origin of life posit that inorganic catalysts enabled self-organized chemical precursors to the pathways of metabolism, including those that make genetic molecules. Recently, experiments showing nonenzymatic versions of a number of core metabolic pathways have started to support this idea. However, experimental demonstrations of nonenzymatic reaction sequences along the de novo ribonucleotide biosynthesis pathways are limited. Here we show that all three reactions of pyrimidine nucleobase biosynthesis that convert aspartate to orotate proceed at 60 °C without photochemistry under aqueous conditions in the presence of metals such as Cu2+ and Mn4+ . Combining reactions into one-pot variants is also possible. Life may not have invented pyrimidine nucleobase biosynthesis from scratch, but simply refined existing nonenzymatic reaction channels. This work is a first step towards uniting metabolic theories of life's origin with those centered around genetic molecules.

Freshwater and Evaporite Brine Compositions on Hadean Earth: Priming the Origins of Life

The chemical composition of aqueous solutions during the Hadean era determined the availability of essential elements for prebiotic synthesis of the molecular building blocks of life. Here we conducted quantitative reaction path modeling of atmosphere-water-rock interactions over a range of environmental conditions to estimate freshwater and evaporite brine compositions. We then evaluated the solution chemistries for their potential to influence ribonucleotide synthesis and polymerization as well as protocell membrane stability. Specifically, solutions formed by komatiite and tonalite (primitive crustal rocks) weathering and evaporation-rehydration (drying-wetting) cycles were studied assuming neutral atmospheric composition over a wide range of values of atmospheric partial pressure of CO₂ (P_CO2) and temperatures (T). Solution pH decreased and total dissolved concentrations of inorganic P, Mg, Ca, Fe, and C (P_T, Mg_T, Ca_T, Fe_T, and C_T) increased with increasing P_CO2. The P_CO2 and T dictated how the solution evolved with regard to minerals precipitated and ions left in solution. At T = 75°C and P_CO2 < 0.05 atm, the concentration ratio of magnesium to calcium ion concentrations (Mg²⁺/Ca²⁺) was < 1 and predominantly metal aluminosilicates (including clays), dolomite, gibbsite, and pyrite (FeS₂) precipitated, whereas at P_CO2 > 0.05 atm, Mg²⁺/Ca²⁺ was > 1 and mainly magnesite, dolomite, pyrite, chalcedony (SiO₂), and kaolinite (Al₂Si₂O₅) precipitated. At T = 75°C and P_CO2 > 0.05 atm, hydroxyapatite (HAP) precipitated during weathering but not during evaporation, and so, P_T increased with each evaporation-rehydration cycle, while Mg_T, Ca_T, and Fe_T decreased as other minerals precipitated. At T = 75°C and P_CO2 ∼5 atm, reactions with komatiite provided end-of-weathering solutions with high enough Mg²⁺ concentrations to promote RNA-template directed and montmorillonite-promoted nonenzymatic RNA polymerization, but incompatible with protocell membranes; however, montmorillonite-promoted RNA polymerization could proceed with little or no Mg²⁺ present. Cyclically evaporating/rehydrating brines from komatiite weathering at T = 75°C and P_CO2 ∼5 atm yielded the following: (1) high P_T values that could promote ribonucleotide synthesis, and (2) low divalent cation concentrations compatible with amino acid-promoted, montmorillonite-catalyzed RNA polymerization and with protocell membranes, but too low for template-directed nonenzymatic RNA polymerization. For all P_CO2 values, Mg²⁺ and P_T concentrations decreased, whereas the HCO₃^- concentration increased within increasing temperature, due to the retrograde solubility of the minerals controlling these ions' concentrations; Fe²⁺ concentration increased because of prograde pyrite solubility. Tonalite weathering and cyclical wetting-drying reactions did not produce solution compositions favorable for promoting prebiotic RNA formation. Conversely, the ion concentrations compatible with protocell emergence, placed constraints on P_CO2 of early Earth's atmosphere. In summary: (1) prebiotic RNA synthesis and membrane self-assembly could have been achieved even under neutral atmosphere conditions by atmosphere-water-komatiite rock interactions; and (2) constraints on element availability for the origins of life and early P_CO2 were addressed by a single, globally operating mechanism of atmosphere-water-rock interactions without invoking special microenvironments. The present results support a facile origins-of-life hypothesis even under a neutral atmosphere as long as other favorable geophysical and planetary conditions are also met.

Catalytic Prebiotic Formation of Glycerol Phosphate Esters and an Estimation of Their Steady State Abundance under Plausible Early Earth Conditions

The emergence of biological phosphate esters of glycerol could have been a crucial step in the origin and evolution of life on the early Earth as glycerol phosphates today play a central role in biochemistry. We investigate here the formation of the glycerol phosphates by employing various rock samples, salts, and minerals as potential catalysts to aid the phosphorylation process. We report the synthesis of various phosphate esters of glycerol including glycerol-1-phosphate, glycerol-2-phosphate, cyclic glycerol-monophosphate as well as various diphosphate esters. Furthermore, the decomposition rates of glycerol phosphate under mild heating were also studied while keeping the pH constant. It was observed that glycerol phosphate starts decomposing quickly under mild heating conditions into inorganic orthophosphate and pyrophosphate, and a steady state concentration of ~0.5 M of glycerol phosphate may have been reasonable in ponds with abundant glycerol, phosphate, urea, and catalytic minerals.