The importance of glyceraldehyde radiolysis in chemical evolution

Cruz-Castañeda, J.; Aguilar-Ovando, E.; Buhse, Thomas; Ramos-Bernal, S.; Meléndez-López, A. L.; Camargo-Raya, Claudia; Fuentes-Carreón, C.; Negrón‐Mendoza, A.

doi:10.1007/s10967-016-5080-2

Cited by 7 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…There has been speculation that radiolytic chemistry may have played, a direct role in the complex chemical networks thought necessary for the origins of life on Earth. Ancient radioactive mineral deposits such as those containing monazite and uraninite could have provided, locally high fluxes of alpha, beta and gamma radiation on their surfaces.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Radiolytic Synthesis of Cyanogen Chloride, Cyanamide and Simple Sugar Precursors

Hongo

Yoda

et al. 2018

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Chemical evolution, from simple molecules to complex systems, is fundamental to modern origins of life research, and complex reaction networks are often supposed to have operated on the early Earth. Herein, a variety of compounds useful particularly for RNA synthesis − namely, cyanogen chloride, cyanamide, and nitrile precursors to simple sugars − are produced in short order by a chemical reaction network starting from hydrogen cyanide and driven by gamma radiolysis. The radiolytic yield of cyanamide was found to be proportional to the concentration of chloride, an often overlooked spectator anion. Aqueous irradiation of hydrogen cyanide in the presence of sodium chloride also affords cyanogen chloride, a possible intermediate in the radiolytic synthesis of cyanamide. Meanwhile, the synthesis of simple sugar precursors is proposed to proceed through a Kiliani‐Fischer homologation mechanism made possible by the reducing power of the solvated electron and hydrogen atom. Such a reaction network has the potential to serve as a model for better understanding and engineering chemical evolution of complex mixtures in the laboratory that could have happened on the early Earth.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Radiolytic Synthesis of Cyanogen Chloride, Cyanamide and Simple Sugar Precursors

Hongo

Yoda

et al. 2018

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“…The authors considered their results as comparable with some L excesses of amino acids measured in meteorites, , stressing the role of possible asymmetric astrophysical forces at the origin of biomolecular homochirality. Recently, the possible impact of magnetic circular dichroism (MCD) of UV sunlight resulting in circular polarization anisotropy has been calculated to yield an ee of around 10 –13 for glyceraldehyde, i.e., a chiral molecule of prebiotic interest that has been shown before as relevant for extraterrestrial scenarios of sugar formation. − Without any doubt, the substantial gap between these rather small ee values and the high enantiopurity observed in Earth’s biosphere trigger the search for new chemical scenarios leading to high racemic biases as for instance given by enantioselective autocatalysis in open systems (see sections and ).…”

Section: Chiral Polarization Forcesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spontaneous Deracemizations

et al. 2021

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Spontaneous deracemizations is a challenging, multidisciplinary subject in current chirality research. In the absence of any chiral inductors, an achiral substance or a racemic composition is driven into an enantioenriched or even homochiral state through a selective energy input, e.g., chemical potential, photoirradiation, mechanical grinding, ultrasound waves, thermal gradients, etc. The most prominent examples of such transformations are the Soai reaction and the Viedma deracemization. In this review, we track the most recent developments in this topic and recall that many other deracemizations have been reported for solutions from mesophases to conglomerate crystallizations. A compiled set of simply available achiral organic, inorganic, organometallic, and MOF compounds, yielding conglomerate crystals, should give the impetus to realize new experiments on spontaneous deracemizations. Taking into account thermodynamic constraints, modeling efforts have shown that structural features alone are not sufficient to describe spontaneous deracemizations. As a guideline of this review, particular attention is paid to the physicochemical origin and symmetry requirements of such processes.

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