Aldehydes and sugars from evolved precometary ice analogs: Importance of ices in astrochemical and prebiotic evolution

Abstract

Evolved interstellar ices observed in dense protostellar molecular clouds may arguably be considered as part of precometary materials that will later fall on primitive telluric planets, bringing a wealth of complex organic compounds. In our laboratory, experiments reproducing the photo/thermochemical evolution of these ices are routinely performed. Following previous amino acid identifications in the resulting room temperature organic residues, we have searched for a different family of molecules of potential prebiotic interest. Using multidimensional gas chromatography coupled to time-of-flight mass spectrometry, we have detected 10 aldehydes, including the sugar-related glycolaldehyde and glyceraldehyde-two species considered as key prebiotic intermediates in the first steps toward the synthesis of ribonucleotides in a planetary environment. The presence of ammonia in water and methanol ice mixtures appears essential for the recovery of these aldehydes in the refractory organic residue at room temperature, although these products are free of nitrogen. We finally point out the importance of detecting aldehydes and sugars in extraterrestrial environments, in the gas phase of hot molecular clouds, and, more importantly, in comets and in primitive meteorites that have most probably seeded the Earth with organic material as early as 4.2 billion years ago.glyceraldehyde | glycolaldehyde | astrochemistry | precometary ices | prebiotic evolution

Earth as a Tool for Astrobiology—A European Perspective

“…The room temperature residue can then be collected for further analysis such as GC-MS, High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) and Very High Mass Resolution Spectrometry (VHRMS). Schematic of the experimental set-up from Briani et al 2013 of ribonucleotides in a particularly primitive Earth-like environment (Powner et al 2009), were found (de Marcellus et al 2015). More recently, the detection of the aldopentose ribose together with a full family of structurally related sugar molecules have been reported in quite high abundances in the same laboratory ices (Meinert et al 2016).…”

One-step electric-field driven methane and formaldehyde synthesis from liquid methanol

“…Indeed, newly proposed mechanisms of hydrocarbon production from the simplest alcohol in interstellar space have just been suggested by Olah et al 22 Incidentally, a steady growing consensus on (proto)sugar synthesis, starting from methanol as the unique carbon source, has been recorded: 23,24 it is plausible that methanol-based chemistry may play an extremely relevant role in synthesising sugars through formaldehyde.…”

COMPLEX HYDROCARBON CHEMISTRY IN INTERSTELLAR AND SOLAR SYSTEM ICES REVEALED: A COMBINED INFRARED SPECTROSCOPY AND REFLECTRON TIME-OF-FLIGHT MASS SPECTROMETRY ANALYSIS OF ETHANE (C2H6) AND D6-ETHANE (C2D6) ICES EXPOSED TO IONIZING RADIATION

“…Finally, a non-volatile residue-a complex mixture of often organic polymers-might be formed from the processing of carbon-bearing ices; this results in a substantial overlap of vibrational modes in the infrared spectrum Modica et al 2012;Callahan et al 2013;Danger et al 2013;de Marcellus et al 2015). Although the infrared spectra of the residues can be deconvoluted, this leads to the identification of functional groups rather than specific molecules.…”

“…Although the infrared spectra of the residues can be deconvoluted, this leads to the identification of functional groups rather than specific molecules. Often these residues are analyzed offline via gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) (Meinert et al 2012;Callahan et al 2013;Abou Mrad et al 2014;de Marcellus et al 2015) which results in the exposure of the residue to chemical processing such as acid hydrolysis and derivatizing with volatile trimethylsilyl derivatives (-Si(CH 3 ) 3 ). It is likely that this processing leads to a modification and degradation of the residues (Fang et al 2015).…”