Two-Step Potentially Prebiotic Synthesis of α-d-Cytidine-5‘-phosphate from d-Glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate

5‘-Ribonucleotide precursors of RNA have previously been difficult to synthesize under prebiotically plausible conditions because of the inaccessibility of ribose-5-phosphate. Here we demonstrate a process in which ribose-5-phosphate is bypassed, and a cytidine 5‘-ribonucleotide is efficiently assembled under mild conditions in two steps from glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate, 2-aminooxazole, cyanoacetylene, and water.