Meteorite‐Assisted Phosphorylation of Adenosine Under Proton Irradiation Conditions

Bizzarri, Bruno Mattia; Šponer, Judit E.; Cassone, Giuseppe; Kapralov, Michail; Тимошенко, Г. Н.; Krasavin, E. A.; Fanelli, Guido; Timperio, Anna Maria; Mauro, Ernesto Di; Saladino, Raffaele

doi:10.1002/syst.201900039

Cited by 14 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 71 publications

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“…Recent reports have suggested a mechanism of glycine formation in the interstellar medium without the presence of any energetic sources [7]. The role of meteorites has also been studied in terms of assisting the synthesis of nucleosides and nucleotides [8,9]. Thus exogenous sources could have provided a potential amount of biologically important organics to the early Earth and thus could have been a major source of the Earth's organic budget.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

New Signatures of Bio-Molecular Complexity in the Hypervelocity Impact Ejecta of Icy Moon Analogues

Surendra

Dilip

Meka

et al. 2022

Life

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Impact delivery of prebiotic compounds to the early Earth from an impacting comet is considered to be one of the possible ways by which prebiotic molecules arrived on the Earth. Given the ubiquity of impact features observed on all planetary bodies, bolide impacts may be a common source of organics on other planetary bodies both in our own and other solar systems. Biomolecules such as amino acids have been detected on comets and are known to be synthesized due to impact-induced shock processing. Here we report the results of a set of hypervelocity impact experiments where we shocked icy mixtures of amino acids mimicking the icy surface of planetary bodies with high-speed projectiles using a two-stage light gas gun and analyzed the ejecta material after impact. Electron microscopic observations of the ejecta have shown the presence of macroscale structures with long polypeptide chains revealed from LCMS analysis. These results suggest a pathway in which impact on cometary ices containing building blocks of life can lead to the synthesis of material architectures that could have played a role in the emergence of life on the Earth and which may be applied to other planetary bodies as well.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

New Signatures of Bio-Molecular Complexity in the Hypervelocity Impact Ejecta of Icy Moon Analogues

Surendra

Dilip

Meka

et al. 2022

Life

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“…The interaction of the vicinal hydroxyl groups with the mineral surface favours the addition of the nucleobase from the beta-side of the molecule to yield biologically useful adenosine b-nucleoside. An even more significant regioselective effect has been observed during thermal phosphorylation of nucleosides with common mineral phosphates in the presence of formamide [215]. In this latter case, the 5',3'-cyclic nucleotide monophosphate was selectively accumulated for longer reaction time [216].…”

Section: State Of the Art: Prebiotic Synthesismentioning

confidence: 99%

Ariel – a window to the origin of life on early earth?

et al. 2020

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Is there life beyond Earth? An ideal research program would first ascertain how life on Earth began and then use this as a blueprint for its existence elsewhere. But the origin of life on Earth is still not understood, what then could be the way forward? Upcoming observations of terrestrial exoplanets provide a unique opportunity for answering this fundamental question through the study of other planetary systems. If we are able to see how physical and chemical environments similar to the early Earth evolve we open a window into our own Hadean eon, despite all information from this time being long lost from our planet's geological record. A careful investigation of the chemistry expected on young exoplanets is therefore necessary, and the preparation of reference materials for spectroscopic observations is of paramount importance. In particular, the deduction of chemical markers identifying specific processes and features in exoplanetary environments, ideally "uniquely". For instance, prebiotic feedstock molecules, in the form of aerosols and vapours, could be observed in transmission spectra in the near future whilst their surface deposits could be observed from reflectance spectra. The same detection methods also promise to identify particular intermediates of chemical and physical processes known to be prebiotically plausible. Is Ariel truly able to open a window to the past and answer questions concerning the origin of life on our planet and the universe? In this paper, we discuss aspects of prebiotic chemistry that will help in formulating future observational and data interpretation strategies for the Ariel mission. This paper is intended to open a discussion and motivate future detailed laboratory studies of prebiotic processes on young exoplanets and their chemical signatures.

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“…Impact and post-impact synthesis of organic molecules attributed to life's origins might have started from a broad repertoire of prebiotic molecules. However, the apparent relevance of two major starting compounds has enormously increased in the last decade: HCN Sutherland, 2016;Ferus et al, 2017a;Civiš et al, 2017;Sutherland, 2017;Xu et al, 2017;Ferus et al, 2020) and its hydration product formamide (HCONH 2 ) (Saladino et al, 2012(Saladino et al, , 2016Ferus et al, 2015b;Rotelli et al, 2016;Cassone et al, 2017;Bizzarri et al, 2020;Cabedo et al, 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Formamide-Based Post-impact Thermal Prebiotic Synthesis in Simulated Craters: Intermediates, Products and Mechanism

Ferus

Knížek

Petera

et al. 2022

Front. Astron. Space Sci.

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Influx of matter from impacting meteoroids and hydrothermal crater weathering are important factors modifying the rock and mineral inventory of young planets undergoing heavy bombardment. These processes may have influenced not only the geochemical environment of, e.g., early Mars and other planets, but also the peculiar prebiotic chemistry on early Earth. Here, we present a synergistic experimental and computational investigation of the intermediates of chemical reactions of the formamide-based synthesis of canonical and non-canonical nucleobases by thermochemistry in hot hydrothermal crater environments. We put our findings into context with previously investigated plasma-initiated synthesis occuring directly during impact. Both processes result into the formation of all canonical nucleobases, hypoxanthine, purine, and into the onset of the simplest amino acid glycine. Furthermore, it turns out that radical species such as CN and H play a key role in the plasma-assisted impact chemistry. However, post-impact thermochemistry is essential for the origin of formamidine and 2-aminoacetonitrile, intermediate species detected in this study by means of FTIR spectroscopy.

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Meteorite‐Assisted Phosphorylation of Adenosine Under Proton Irradiation Conditions

Cited by 14 publications

References 71 publications

New Signatures of Bio-Molecular Complexity in the Hypervelocity Impact Ejecta of Icy Moon Analogues

New Signatures of Bio-Molecular Complexity in the Hypervelocity Impact Ejecta of Icy Moon Analogues

Ariel – a window to the origin of life on early earth?

Formamide-Based Post-impact Thermal Prebiotic Synthesis in Simulated Craters: Intermediates, Products and Mechanism

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