The Organic Composition of Carbonaceous Meteorites: The Evolutionary Story Ahead of Biochemistry

Pizzarello, Sandra; Shock, Everett L.

doi:10.1101/cshperspect.a002105

Cited by 237 publications

(176 citation statements)

References 62 publications

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“…co-workers (1990, 1992) estimated the total amount of organic carbon compounds that could be delivered in this way, and within an order of magnitude, it was in the range of the amounts estimated to be synthesized by Miller-Urey reactions under the most favorable conditions. The energy content would be present in the form of reduced carbon compounds that could undergo chemical modification if they were exposed to mineral surfaces in geological settings of appropriate fugacity (Shock 1990) (See also Pizzarello and Shock 2010). This possibility is largely unexplored and is likely to be a fruitful direction for future research.…”

Section: Energy Sources On the Prebiotic Earthmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bioenergetics and Life's Origins

Deamer¹,

Weber²

2010

Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology

151

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Bioenergetics is central to our understanding of living systems, yet has attracted relatively little attention in origins of life research. This article focuses on energy resources available to drive primitive metabolism and the synthesis of polymers that could be incorporated into molecular systems having properties associated with the living state. The compartmented systems are referred to as protocells, each different from all the rest and representing a kind of natural experiment. The origin of life was marked when a rare few protocells happened to have the ability to capture energy from the environment to initiate catalyzed heterotrophic growth directed by heritable genetic information in the polymers. This article examines potential sources of energy available to protocells, and mechanisms by which the energy could be used to drive polymer synthesis.P revious research on life's origins has for the most part focused on the chemistry and energy sources required to produce the small molecules of life-amino acids, nucleobases, and amphiphiles-and to a lesser extent on condensation reactions by which the monomers can be linked into biologically relevant polymers. In modern living cells, polymers are synthesized from activated monomers such as the nucleoside triphosphates used by DNA and RNA polymerases, and the tRNA-amino acyl conjugates that supply ribosomes with activated amino acids. Activated monomers are essential because polymerization reactions occur in an aqueous medium and are therefore energetically uphill in the absence of activation.A central problem therefore concerns mechanisms by which prebiotic monomers could have been activated to assemble into polymers. Most biopolymers of life are synthesized when the equivalent of a water molecule is removed to form the ester bonds of nucleic acids, glycoside bonds of polysaccharides, and peptide bonds in proteins. In life today, the removal of water is performed upstream of the actual bond formation. This process involves the energetically downhill transfer of electrons, which is coupled to either substrate-level oxidation or generation of a proton gradient that in turn is the energy source for the synthesis of anhydride pyrophosphate bonds in ATP. The energy stored in the pyrophosphate bond is then distributed throughout the cell to drive most other energydependent reactions. This is a complex and highly evolved process, so here we consider simpler ways in which energy could have been

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Section: Energy Sources On the Prebiotic Earthmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bioenergetics and Life's Origins

Deamer¹,

Weber²

2010

Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology

151

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“…In fact, primitive carbonaceous meteorites with higher total concentrations of amino acids that reach 300 ppm (Burton et al, 2012) and 2400 ppm (Pizzarello and Shock, 2010) were found. Moreover, amino acids can be produced through a process of shock synthesis from cometary material impacting the icy surface (Martins et al, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Polymerization of Building Blocks of Life on Europa and Other Icy Moons

Kimura

Kitadai

2015

Astrobiology

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The outer Solar System may provide a potential habitat for extraterrestrial life. Remote sensing data from the Galileo spacecraft suggest that the jovian icy moons-Europa, Ganymede, and possibly Callisto-may harbor liquid water oceans underneath their icy crusts. Although compositional information required for the discussion of habitability is limited because of significantly restricted observation data, organic molecules are ubiquitous in the Universe. Recently, in situ spacecraft measurements and experiments suggest that amino acids can be formed abiotically on interstellar ices and comets. These amino acids could be continuously delivered by meteorite or comet impacts to icy moons. Here, we show that polymerization of organic monomers, in particular amino acids and nucleotides, could proceed spontaneously in the cold environment of icy moons, in particular the jovian icy moon Europa as a typical example, based on thermodynamic calculations, though kinetics of formation are not addressed. Observed surface temperature on Europa is 120 and 80 K in the equatorial region and polar region, respectively. At such low temperatures, Gibbs energies of polymerization become negative, and the estimated thermal structure of the icy crust should contain a shallow region (i.e., at a depth of only a few kilometers) favorable for polymerization. Investigation of the possibility of organic monomer polymerization on icy moons could provide good constraints on the origin and early evolution of extraterrestrial life.

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“…This is the case for instance in the interstellar medium where organic building blocks are formed and lead eventually to the presence of α-amino acids in meteorites, which is now well recognized [1,2]. It was probably also the case in the atmosphere of the primitive Earth although in less abundant amounts than predicted by the Miller experiment [3,4].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 92%

Systems chemistry of α-amino acids and peptides

Danger

Boiteau

Rossi

et al. 2014

BIO Web of Conferences

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Abstract.Pathways have been disclosed in the past decade, which support the possibility that α-amino acids could have contributed to self-organization processes leading to the emergence of life. It is proposed that the systems chemistry of these simple building blocks may have led to features of self-organization through the realization of protometabolisms based on unidirectional loops involving both peptide formation and breakdown and additional feedback processes. Potential peptide activating agents have been identified. Scenarios of peptide elongation are proposed to account for peptide elongation both at the N-terminus and the C-terminus and new indications that these processes could be involved in symmetry breaking have been provided.

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The Organic Composition of Carbonaceous Meteorites: The Evolutionary Story Ahead of Biochemistry

Cited by 237 publications

References 62 publications

Bioenergetics and Life's Origins

Bioenergetics and Life's Origins

Polymerization of Building Blocks of Life on Europa and Other Icy Moons

Systems chemistry of α-amino acids and peptides

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