TY - JOUR
T1 - Nucleobase and amino acid formation through impacts of meteorites on the early ocean
AU - Furukawa, Yoshihiro
AU - Nakazawa, Hiromoto
AU - Sekine, Toshimori
AU - Kobayashi, Takamichi
AU - Kakegawa, Takeshi
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was funded by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI grants to T. Kakegawa ( 22654063 and 24244084 ) and Y. Furukawa ( 23740402 ). The authors appreciate the anonymous reviewers for helpful comments that improved the manuscript, T. Taniguchi for comments on the impact experiments, T. Onodera and T. Tsuda for the sample container design, and C. Suzuki for support with the experiments and analyses.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2015/11/1
Y1 - 2015/11/1
N2 - The emergence of life's building blocks on the prebiotic Earth was the first crucial step for the origins of life. Extraterrestrial delivery of intact amino acids and nucleobases is the prevailing hypothesis for their availability on prebiotic Earth because of the difficulties associated with the production of these organics from terrestrial carbon and nitrogen sources under plausible prebiotic conditions. However, the variety and amounts of these intact organics delivered by meteorites would have been limited. Previous shock-recovery experiments have demonstrated that meteorite impact reactions could have generated organics on the prebiotic Earth. Here, we report on the simultaneous formation of nucleobases (cytosine and uracil) found in DNA and/or RNA, various proteinogenic amino acids (glycine, alanine, serine, aspartic acid, glutamic acid, valine, leucine, isoleucine, and proline), non-proteinogenic amino acids, and aliphatic amines in experiments simulating reactions induced by extraterrestrial objects impacting on the early oceans. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of the formation of nucleobases from inorganic materials by shock conditions. In these experiments, bicarbonate was used as the carbon source. Bicarbonate, which is a common dissolved carbon species in CO2-rich atmospheric conditions, was presumably the most abundant carbon species in the early oceans and in post-impact plumes. Thus, the present results expand the possibility that impact-induced reactions generated various building blocks for life on prebiotic Earth in large quantities through the use of terrestrial carbon reservoirs.
AB - The emergence of life's building blocks on the prebiotic Earth was the first crucial step for the origins of life. Extraterrestrial delivery of intact amino acids and nucleobases is the prevailing hypothesis for their availability on prebiotic Earth because of the difficulties associated with the production of these organics from terrestrial carbon and nitrogen sources under plausible prebiotic conditions. However, the variety and amounts of these intact organics delivered by meteorites would have been limited. Previous shock-recovery experiments have demonstrated that meteorite impact reactions could have generated organics on the prebiotic Earth. Here, we report on the simultaneous formation of nucleobases (cytosine and uracil) found in DNA and/or RNA, various proteinogenic amino acids (glycine, alanine, serine, aspartic acid, glutamic acid, valine, leucine, isoleucine, and proline), non-proteinogenic amino acids, and aliphatic amines in experiments simulating reactions induced by extraterrestrial objects impacting on the early oceans. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of the formation of nucleobases from inorganic materials by shock conditions. In these experiments, bicarbonate was used as the carbon source. Bicarbonate, which is a common dissolved carbon species in CO2-rich atmospheric conditions, was presumably the most abundant carbon species in the early oceans and in post-impact plumes. Thus, the present results expand the possibility that impact-induced reactions generated various building blocks for life on prebiotic Earth in large quantities through the use of terrestrial carbon reservoirs.
KW - Amino acid
KW - Early Earth
KW - Meteorite impact
KW - Nucleobase
KW - Prebiotic
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U2 - 10.1016/j.epsl.2015.07.049
DO - 10.1016/j.epsl.2015.07.049
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84940439703
VL - 429
SP - 216
EP - 222
JO - Earth and Planetary Sciences Letters
JF - Earth and Planetary Sciences Letters
SN - 0012-821X
ER -