"My question is about the pictures taken on mars. Why does NASA change the coloring throughout the pictures to make them look red?"
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METEORITIC AMINO ACIDS AS ASYMMETRIC CATALYSTS IN PREBIOTIC CHEMISTRY
PI: Pizzarello, Sandra
The non-racemic amino acids of meteorites provide the only natural sample of molecular asymmetry measured so far outside the Biosphere and it is reasonable to suggest that these compounds may have been important to the prebiotic molecular evolution of the early Earth. Much has been learned about meteoritic amino acids through extensive molecular, isotopic, and chiral analyses of the last thirty years. We know, for example, that they were formed abiotically and that their syntheses involved several solar and pre-solar environments, with some showing high deuterium enrichments that relate them to the cold regimes of the interstellar medium. To date, however, several gaps remain in our understanding of the specific syntheses that led to these compounds’ formation as well as of the significance their exogenous delivery might have had for the origin of terrestrial homochirality. Therefore, we propose to continue the studies conducted in this laboratory during previous grant years with the following analytical tasks.
- To constrain the possible origin of meteoritic amino acids by conducting computer-aided ab initio calculation of selected amino acid species.
- To probe further the possible effect of abiotic ee in molecular evolution and expand the prebiotic modeling of catalytic transfer of asymmetry from di-peptides to sugars to include the syntheses of compounds that are important to extant life such as ribose and glucose.
The proposed work has shown much promise in preliminary studies and will expand greatly our understanding of the prebiotic traits in chemical evolution that could foster the establishment of biomolecule precursors. As such, they are directly relevant to the study of the origin of life and the objectives of this NRA.
