scholarly journals Prebiotic materials from on and off the early Earth

2006 ◽  
Vol 361 (1474) ◽  
pp. 1689-1702 ◽  
Author(s):  
Max Bernstein
Keyword(s):  
Amino Acids ◽  
Solar System ◽  
Oxidation State ◽  
Hydrothermal Vents ◽  
Organic Molecules ◽  
Early Earth ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Evolution Of Life ◽  
Carbon Compounds ◽  
Compare And Contrast

One of the greatest puzzles of all time is how did life arise? It has been universally presumed that life arose in a soup rich in carbon compounds, but from where did these organic molecules come? In this article, I will review proposed terrestrial sources of prebiotic organic molecules, such as Miller–Urey synthesis (including how they would depend on the oxidation state of the atmosphere) and hydrothermal vents and also input from space. While the former is perhaps better known and more commonly taught in school, we now know that comet and asteroid dust deliver tons of organics to the Earth every day, therefore this flux of reduced carbon from space probably also played a role in making the Earth habitable. We will compare and contrast the types and abundances of organics from on and off the Earth given standard assumptions. Perhaps each process provided specific compounds (amino acids, sugars, amphiphiles) that were directly related to the origin or early evolution of life. In any case, whether planetary, nebular or interstellar, we will consider how one might attempt to distinguish between abiotic organic molecules from actual signs of life as part of a robotic search for life in the Solar System.

Carbonaceous chondrites: tracers of the prebiotic chemical evolution of the Solar System

2005 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anja C. Andersen ◽  
Henning Haack
Keyword(s):  
Amino Acids ◽  
Solar System ◽  
Direct Result ◽  
Early Earth ◽  
Carbonaceous Chondrites ◽  
Subsequent Evolution ◽  
Prebiotic Chemical ◽  
Unique Source ◽  
Sugar Derivatives ◽  
Source Of Information

The astrobiological relevance of carbonaceous chondrites is reviewed. It is argued that the primitive meteorites called carbonaceous chondrites provide a unique source of information about the materials and conditions in the Solar System during the earliest phases of its history, and its subsequent evolution. Presolar dust grains extracted from the carbonaceous chondrites provide direct information on the previous generations of stars that provided the materials present for planet formation. The organic material found in carbonaceous chondrites consist of amino acids, carboxylic acids and sugar derivatives. Part of the amino acids found show L-enantiomeric excesses, which indicates that homochirality on Earth could be a direct result of input from meteoritic material to the early Earth.

scholarly journals Synthesis and Preservation of Organic Molecules with Homochiral Excess by Adsorption on Carbon in Carbonaceous Chondrites

2021 ◽  
pp. 46-53
Author(s):  
V. M. Zhmakin
Keyword(s):  
Carbon Dioxide ◽  
Amino Acids ◽  
Carbon Monoxide ◽  
Lactic Acid ◽  
Organic Synthesis ◽  
Organic Molecules ◽  
Early Earth ◽  
Carbonaceous Chondrites ◽  
Abiogenic Synthesis ◽  
Extraterrestrial Origin

The nature of carbon, initial components, molecules of homochiral abiogenic synthesis and their preservation from decay and racemization for more than 4.5 billion years in carbonaceous chondrites has not been established. In the oxygen-free atmospheres of the nebula and early Earth, hydrogen and hydrogen-containing gases were oxidized with carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide to form carbon and water, as well as the intermediates of these reactions, formaldehyde and methane acid. Together with ammonia, they were the initial components of organic synthesis. According to the Rebinder rule, carbon adsorbs hydrogen well, including in organic molecules. In this connection, experiments with the assumed conditions of the early Earth were carried out by adsorption on carbon to obtain R-(rectus, Latin) ribose from formaldehyde, and S-(sinister) serine from formaldehyde, methane acid and ammonia. For other S-amino acids, a stereo chemical justification of their formation based on S-serine is given. For carbonaceous chondrites, the results of the above experiments were confirmed by the correlation of an increase in homochiral excess with an increase in the amount of hydrogen in aldonic acids and lactic acid with a coefficient of 0.94 and 0.85 in amino acids. The justification of the homochiral process will reduce the costs of searching for life on planets, for scientific research, for the production of medicines, perfumes, food, and so on. Doubts about the extraterrestrial origin of homochiral enantiomers in carbonaceous chondrites arise most often due to a lack of understanding of the reasons for their appearance. This work will significantly reduce such skepticism.

scholarly journals Synthesis of Organic Molecules, R Ribose and S Amino Acids by Adsorption on Carbon at The Birth of Life on The Earth

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (30) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Vladimir Zhmakin
Keyword(s):  
Amino Acids ◽  
Fatty Acids ◽  
Phosphoric Acid ◽  
Organic Molecules ◽  
Optical Purity ◽  
Optically Active ◽  
Volcanic Gas ◽  
Early Atmosphere ◽  
The Earth

Reasons for appearance of optically active organic molecules in nature have not been ascertained up to the present, but clarification of conditions on the Earth during the period of their appearance can contribute to this. H2 and gases, containing H2, were oxidized by CO2 with allocation of carbon and H2O or CH2O and СНO(OН) in volcanic gas and in the early atmosphere. During adsorption on carbon CH2O dissolved in water could be the synthesis only of R (rectus, Latin) ribose, and with NH3 and СНO(OН) synthesis of glycine and only of S (sinister) serine, and on its bases of other S amino acids. Adsorption on the carbon ensured in complex: concentration of initial components, hydrophobic-hydrophilic properties, optical purity, protection from hydration, decay and racemization. It is shown the possibility of the early Archean reactions: dehydration of phosphoric acid, of phosphoester bonds connection formation in nucleotides, with CH2O fatty acids and nitrogenous bases.

scholarly journals The Cosmochemical Record of Carbonaceous Meteorites: An Evolutionary Story

2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra Pizzarello
Keyword(s):  
Amino Acids ◽  
Water Soluble ◽  
Early Earth ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Terrestrial Environments ◽  
Extraterrestrial Origin ◽  
Exogenous Delivery ◽  
The Origin Of Life ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Evolutionary Story

This account traces a lecture given to El Colegio Nacional last March during a Conference “On the origin of life on the Earth” organized to celebrate Darwin’s Bicentennial. It reports on the extraterrestrial organic materials found in carbon-containing meteorites, their composition, likely origin and possible prebiotic contribution to early terrestrial environments. Overall, this abiotic chemistry displaysstructures as diverse as kerogen-like macromolecules and simpler soluble compounds, such as amino acids, amines and polyols, and show an isotopic composition that verifies their extraterrestrial origin and lineage to cosmochemical synthetic regimes. Some meteoritic compounds have identical counterpart in the biosphere and encourage the proposal that their exogenous delivery to the early Earth might havefostered molecular evolution. Particularly suggestive in this regard are the unique l-asymmetry of a number of amino acids in some meteorites as well as the rich and almost exclusively water-soluble compositions discovered for other meteorite types.

scholarly journals Extraterrestrial hexamethylenetetramine in meteorites—a precursor of prebiotic chemistry in the inner solar system

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasuhiro Oba ◽  
Yoshinori Takano ◽  
Hiroshi Naraoka ◽  
Yoshihiro Furukawa ◽  
Daniel P. Glavin ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Amino Acids ◽  
Solar System ◽  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Organic Compounds ◽  
Organic Molecules ◽  
Prebiotic Chemistry ◽  
Carbonaceous Chondrites ◽  
Astrophysical Interest ◽  
Extraction Processes ◽  
Extraterrestrial Materials

AbstractDespite extensive studies on the formation of organic molecules in various extraterrestrial environments, it still remains under debate when, where, and how such molecules were abiotically formed. A key molecule to solve the problem, hexamethylenetetramine (HMT) has not been confirmed in extraterrestrial materials despite extensive laboratory experimental evidence that it can be produced in interstellar or cometary environments. Here we report the first detection of HMT and functionalized HMT species in the carbonaceous chondrites Murchison, Murray, and Tagish Lake. While the part-per-billion level concentration of HMT in Murchison and Tagish Lake is comparable to other related soluble organic molecules like amino acids, these compounds may have eluded detection in previous studies due to the loss of HMT during the extraction processes. HMT, which can yield important molecules for prebiotic chemistry such as formaldehyde and ammonia upon degradation, is a likely precursor of meteoritic organic compounds of astrochemical and astrophysical interest.

How Did It All Begin: The Self-assembly of Organic Molecules and the Origin of Cellular Life

1999 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 221-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
David W. Deamer
Keyword(s):  
Solar System ◽  
Self Assembly ◽  
Organic Molecules ◽  
Molecular Nitrogen ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Nearby Star ◽  
Cellular Life ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Galaxy ◽  
The Origin Of Life

Movies are the myths of late-20th century western culture. Because of the power of films likeETto capture our imagination, we are more likely than past generations to accept the possibility that life exists elsewhere in our galaxy. Such a myth can be used to sketch the main themes of this chapter, which concern the origin of life on the Earth.Imagine that 4 billion years ago, intelligent beings evolved on an Earth-like planet in the solar system of a neighboring star. After ten million years of evolution, they have solved the problems of interstellar travel and aging. Virtually immortal family groups set out to explore the galaxy and almost immediately discover a solar system associated with a nearby star only 80 light years away from their home planet. They find that the third planet is rich in the primary elements of life - carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen - which are present in the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide (CO2), molecular nitrogen (N2) and water vapor (H2O). They decide to spend a few centuries studying this planet, which they consider to be a possible model of their own primordial world as it was four billion years in their past.

scholarly journals Exploring the Emergence of RNA Nucleosides and Nucleotides on the Early Earth

Life ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annabelle Biscans
Keyword(s):  
Amino Acids ◽  
Chemical Reactions ◽  
Early Earth ◽  
Evolution Of Life ◽  
Cellular Components

Understanding how life began is one of the most fascinating problems to solve. By approaching this enigma from a chemistry perspective, the goal is to define what series of chemical reactions could lead to the synthesis of nucleotides, amino acids, lipids, and other cellular components from simple feedstocks under prebiotically plausible conditions. It is well established that evolution of life involved RNA which plays central roles in both inheritance and catalysis. In this review, we present historically important and recently published articles aimed at understanding the emergence of RNA nucleosides and nucleotides on the early Earth.

scholarly journals Delivery of Complex Organic Compounds from Planetary Nebulae to the Solar System

2009 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 161-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sun Kwok
Keyword(s):  
Solar System ◽  
Organic Compounds ◽  
Chemical Structure ◽  
Planetary Nebulae ◽  
Early Earth ◽  
Early Solar System ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Planetary Satellites ◽  
The Galaxy ◽  
Complex Organic

AbstractInfrared spectroscopic observations of planetary nebulae and proto-planetary nebulae have shown that complex organic compounds are synthesized in these objects over periods as short as a thousand years. These compounds are ejected into the interstellar medium and spread throughout the Galaxy. Evidence from meteorites has shown that these stellar grains have reached the Solar System, and may have showered the Earth during the heavy bombardment stage of the Early Earth. In this paper, we discuss the chemical structure of stellar organic grains and compare them to the organic matter found in meteorites, comets, asteroids, planetary satellites, and interplanetary particles. The possibility that the early Solar System was chemically enriched by organic compounds ejected from distant stars is presented.

Amino acid cosmogeochemistry

1991 ◽  
Vol 333 (1268) ◽  
pp. 349-358 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Amino Acids ◽  
Amino Acid ◽  
Cosmic Dust ◽  
Dust Particles ◽  
Early Earth ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Racemic Mixtures ◽  
Protein Amino Acids ◽  
Living Organisms ◽  
Diagenetic Reactions

Amino acids are ubiquitous components of living organisms and as a result they are widely distributed on the surface of the Earth. Whereas only 20 amino acids are found in proteins, a much more diverse mixture of amino acids has been detected in carbonaceous meteorites. Amino acids in living organisms consist exclusively of the L-enantiomers, but in meteorites, amino acids with chiral carbons are present as racemic mixtures. Protein amino acids undergo a variety of diagenetic reactions that produce some other amino acids but not the unique amino acids present in meteorites. Nevertheless, trace quantities of meteoritic amino acids may occur on the Earth, either as a result of bolide impact or from the capture of cosmic dust particles. The ensemble of amino acids present on the early Earth before life existed was probably similar to those in prebiotic experiments and meteorites. This generates a question about why the L-amino acids on which life is based were selected.

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