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Survivability and reactivity of glycine and alanine in early oceans: effects of meteorite impacts

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Abstract

Prebiotic oceans might have contained abundant amino acids, and were subjected to meteorite impacts, especially during the late heavy bombardment. It is so far unknown how meteorite impacts affected amino acids in the early oceans. Impact experiments were performed under the conditions where glycine was synthesized from carbon, ammonia, and water, using aqueous solutions containing 13C-labeled glycine and alanine. Selected amino acids and amines in samples were analyzed with liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC/MS). In particular, the 13C-labeled reaction products were analyzed to distinguish between run products and contaminants. The results revealed that both amino acids survived partially in the early ocean through meteorite impacts, that part of glycine changed into alanine, and that large amounts of methylamine and ethylamine were formed. Fast decarboxylation was confirmed to occur during such impact processes. Furthermore, the formation of n-butylamine, detected only in the samples recovered from the solutions with additional nitrogen and carbon sources of ammonia and benzene, suggests that chemical reactions to form new biomolecules can proceed through marine impacts. Methylamine and ethylamine from glycine and alanine increased considerably in the presence of hematite rather than olivine under similar impact conditions. These results also suggest that amino acids present in early oceans can contribute further to impact-induced reactions, implying that impact energy plays a potential role in the prebiotic formation of various biomolecules, although the reactions are complicated and depend upon the chemical environments as well.

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Acknowledgments

The TEM and SEM observations were performed at N-BIRD, Hiroshima University. We thank K. Shibata and M. Maeda for their help. This research was supported in part by grants from JSPS (24244084 to TK, 23740402 to YF, and 24654176 to TS). We are thankful to Kausik Das for improvement of our early manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth and Planetary Systems Science, Graduate School of Science, Hiroshima University, Higashi-Hiroshima, 739-8526, Japan

    Yuhei Umeda, Nao Fukunaga & Toshimori Sekine

  2. Department of Earth and Planetary Materials Science, Tohoku University, Sendai, 980-8578, Japan

    Yoshihiro Furukawa & Takeshi Kakegawa

  3. National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba, 305-0044, Japan

    Takamichi Kobayashi & Hiromoto Nakazawa

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  1. Yuhei Umeda
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  2. Nao Fukunaga
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  3. Toshimori Sekine
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  4. Yoshihiro Furukawa
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  5. Takeshi Kakegawa
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Correspondence to Toshimori Sekine.

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Umeda, Y., Fukunaga, N., Sekine, T. et al. Survivability and reactivity of glycine and alanine in early oceans: effects of meteorite impacts. J Biol Phys 42, 177–198 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10867-015-9400-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10867-015-9400-5

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