Autocatalytic and oscillatory reaction networks that form guanidines and products of their cyclization

Autocatalytic and oscillatory networks of organic reactions are important for designing life-inspired materials and for better understanding the emergence of life on Earth; however, the diversity of the chemistries of these reactions is limited. In this work, we present the thiol-assisted formation of guanidines, which has a mechanism analogous to that of native chemical ligation. Using this reaction, we designed autocatalytic and oscillatory reaction networks that form substituted guanidines from thiouronium salts. The thiouronium salt-based oscillator show good stability of oscillations within a broad range of experimental conditions. By using nitrile-containing starting materials, we constructed an oscillator where the concentration of a bicyclic derivative of dihydropyrimidine oscillates. Moreover, the mixed thioester and thiouronium salt-based oscillator show unique responsiveness to chemical cues. The reactions developed in this work expand our toolbox for designing out-of-equilibrium chemical systems and link autocatalytic and oscillatory chemistry to the synthesis of guanidinium derivatives and the products of their transformations including analogs of nucleobases.