The key role of meteorites in the formation of relevant prebiotic molecules in a formamide/water environment

Rotelli, Luca; Trigo-Rodríguez, J. M.; Moyano-Cambero, C. E.; Carota, Eleonora; Botta, Lorenzo; Mauro, Ernesto Di; Saladino, Raffaele

doi:10.1038/srep38888

Cited by 96 publications

(76 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…To our knowledge, no experimental conditions have been shown to produce the pyrimidine-and purine-based nucleobases together simultaneously in a terrestrial environment. We note, however, that additional pathways for the abiotic formation of nucleobases in an asteroidal or planetary parent body context have also been suggested (e.g., Matthews & Minard 2008;Ménor-Salván & Marín-Yaseli 2012;Pearce & Pudritz 2015;Rotelli et al 2016;Saladino et al 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 71%

The Photochemistry of Purine in Ice Analogs Relevant to Dense Interstellar Clouds

Materese

Nuevo

McDowell

et al. 2018

ApJ

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The aromatic nitrogen heterocyclic compound purine is the core structural framework of many important biomolecules, particularly nucleobases. Purine and purine derivatives have been observed in carbonaceous chondrites, and it has been hypothesized that the exogenous delivery of these compounds, along with many other biologically relevant compounds, may have played a role in the emergence of life. Numerous experiments in our laboratory have demonstrated that the nucleobases used by life to encode genetic material could have been produced abiotically under astrophysically relevant conditions. Specifically, the UV photoprocessing of pyrimidine and purine in simple ices of astrophysical interest has resulted in the production of all five biological nucleobases, namely, uracil (RNA), cytosine (RNA and DNA), thymine (DNA), adenine (RNA and DNA), and guanine (RNA and DNA). Additionally, follow-up work has examined the photochemistry of pyrimidine in more complex astrophysical ice mixtures to better understand the formation of these compounds under realistic conditions. In this work, we examine the photochemistry of purine in more complex ices of astrophysical interest and compare our results with those from simpler ice mixtures. We also examine the effects of competing parallel synthesis of organic compounds in the ices (unrelated to purine). Finally, we discuss the astrophysical and astrobiological implications of our findings.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 71%

The Photochemistry of Purine in Ice Analogs Relevant to Dense Interstellar Clouds

Materese

Nuevo

McDowell

et al. 2018

ApJ

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“…Such hypotheses differ from geologically viable hypotheses that merely involve the expected presence of ammonia, cyanides, sulfides, and formamide dissolved in water during transient reducing conditions, including cyanosulfidic protometabolism (Patel et al, 2015) and the aqueous media with dissolved formamide hypothesis of Rotelli et al (2016).…”

Section: Survival Of Life In the Hadean And Early Archean With Concenmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…Meteorites with complex organic matter continue to hit the Earth; this substrate cannot be ignored for the Hadean. Further, small meteorites were irradiated in space, forming unstable compounds (Rotelli et al, 2016;Costanzo et al, 2017;Saladino et al, 2017). The fragments that arrived on land were further exposed to sunlight with UV radiation.…”

Section: Survival Of Life In the Hadean And Early Archean With Concenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Geological and Geochemical Constraints on the Origin and Evolution of Life

Sleep

2018

Astrobiology

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The traditional tree of life from molecular biology with last universal common ancestor (LUCA) branching into bacteria and archaea (though fuzzy) is likely formally valid enough to be a basis for discussion of geological processes on the early Earth. Biologists infer likely properties of nodal organisms within the tree and, hence, the environment they inhabited. Geologists both vet tenuous trees and putative origin of life scenarios for geological and ecological reasonability and conversely infer geological information from trees. The latter approach is valuable as geologists have only weakly constrained the time when the Earth became habitable and the later time when life actually existed to the long interval between ∼4.5 and ∼3.85 Ga where no intact surface rocks are known. With regard to vetting, origin and early evolution hypotheses from molecular biology have recently centered on serpentinite settings in marine and alternatively land settings that are exposed to ultraviolet sunlight. The existence of these niches on the Hadean Earth is virtually certain. With regard to inferring geological environment from genomics, nodes on the tree of life can arise from true bottlenecks implied by the marine serpentinite origin scenario and by asteroid impact. Innovation of a very useful trait through a threshold allows the successful organism to quickly become very abundant and later root a large clade. The origin of life itself, that is, the initial Darwinian ancestor, the bacterial and archaeal roots as free-living cellular organisms that independently escaped hydrothermal chimneys above marine serpentinite or alternatively from shallow pore-water environments on land, the Selabacteria root with anoxygenic photosynthesis, and the Terrabacteria root colonizing land are attractive examples that predate the geological record. Conversely, geological reasoning presents likely events for appraisal by biologists. Asteroid impacts may have produced bottlenecks by decimating life. Thermophile roots of bacteria and archaea as well as a thermophile LUCA are attractive.

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“…These impacts could have promoted the release of liquid water, initiating aqueous alteration of some minerals and a mobilization of some elements that gave room for growth of secondary (or altered) minerals like these finegrained aqueous alteration phases. To describe and date these processes is extremely important in an astrobiological perspective because aqueous alteration processes could have directly contributed to catalyse the extremely diverse organic species found in carbonaceous chondrites (Rotelli et al, 2016) On the other hand, radiogenic heating of chondritic parent bodies was size-dependent and constrained during the first 10 Ma after their formation. We know this from the carbonates, whose mean size varies with the extent of aqueous alteration.…”

Section: Using the Extent Of Aqueous Alteration To Understand Pre-accmentioning

confidence: 99%

Accretion of Water in Carbonaceous Chondrites: Current Evidence and Implications for the Delivery of Water to Early Earth

et al. 2019

Self Cite

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Protoplanetary disks are dust-rich structures around young stars. The crystalline and amorphous materials contained within these disks are variably thermally processed and accreted to make bodies of a wide range of sizes and compositions, depending on the heliocentric distance of formation. The chondritic meteorites are fragments of relatively small and undifferentiated bodies, and the minerals that they contain carry chemical signatures providing information about the early environment available for planetesimal formation. A current hot topic of debate is the delivery of volatiles to terrestrial planets, understanding that they were built from planetesimals formed under far more reducing conditions than the primordial carbonaceous chondritic bodies. In this review, we describe significant evidence for the accretion of ices and hydrated minerals in the outer protoplanetary disk. In that distant region highly porous and fragile carbon and water-rich transitional asteroids formed, being the parent bodies of the carbonaceous chondrites (CCs). CCs are undifferentiated meteorites that never melted but experienced other physical processes including thermal and aqueous alteration. Recent evidence indicates that few of them have escaped significant alteration, retaining unique features that can be interpreted as evidence of wet accretion. Some examples of carbonaceous chondrite parent body aqueous alteration will be presented. Finally, atomistic interpretations of the first steps leading to water-mediated alteration during the accretion of CCs are provided and discussed. From these new insights into the water retained in CCs we can decipher the pathways of delivery of volatiles to the terrestrial planets.

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The key role of meteorites in the formation of relevant prebiotic molecules in a formamide/water environment

Cited by 96 publications

References 39 publications

The Photochemistry of Purine in Ice Analogs Relevant to Dense Interstellar Clouds

The Photochemistry of Purine in Ice Analogs Relevant to Dense Interstellar Clouds

Geological and Geochemical Constraints on the Origin and Evolution of Life

Accretion of Water in Carbonaceous Chondrites: Current Evidence and Implications for the Delivery of Water to Early Earth

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