Prebiotic synthesis of simple sugars by photoredox systems chemistry

A recent synthesis of activated pyrimidine ribonucleotides under prebiotically plausible conditions relied on mixed oxygenous and nitrogenous systems chemistry. As it stands, this synthesis provides support for the involvement of RNA in the origin of life, but such support would be considerably strengthened if the sugar building blocks for the synthesis--glycolaldehyde and glyceraldehyde--could be shown to derive from one carbon feedstock molecules using similarly mixed oxygenous and nitrogenous systems chemistry. Here, we show that these sugars can be formed from hydrogen cyanide by ultraviolet irradiation in the presence of cyanometallates in a remarkable systems chemistry process. Using copper cyanide complexes, the process operates catalytically to disproportionate hydrogen cyanide, first generating the sugars and then sequestering them as simple derivatives.