Synthesis of 13C-enriched amino acids with 13C-depleted insoluble organic matter in a formose-type reaction in the early solar system

Yoshihiro Furukawa; Yoshinari Iwasa; Yoshito Chikaraishi

doi:10.1126/sciadv.abd3575

Synthesis of ¹³C-enriched amino acids with ¹³C-depleted insoluble organic matter in a formose-type reaction in the early solar system

Sci Adv. 2021 Apr 28;7(18):eabd3575. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abd3575. Print 2021 Apr.

Authors

Yoshihiro Furukawa¹, Yoshinari Iwasa², Yoshito Chikaraishi^{3

4}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Earth Science, Tohoku University, 6-3 Aza-aoba, Aramaki, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980-8578, Japan. furukawa@tohoku.ac.jp.
² Department of Earth Science, Tohoku University, 6-3 Aza-aoba, Aramaki, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980-8578, Japan.
³ Institute of Low-temperature Science, Hokkaido University, Kita-19, Nishi-8, Kita-ku, Sapporo 060-0819, Japan.
⁴ Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, 2-15, Natsushimacho, Yokosuka, Kanagawa 237-0061, Japan.

Abstract

Solvent-soluble organic matter (SOM) in meteorites, which includes life's building molecules, is suspected to originate from the cold region of the early solar system, on the basis of ¹³C enrichment in the molecules. Here, we demonstrate that the isotopic characteristics are reproducible in amino acid synthesis associated with a formose-type reaction in a heated aqueous solution. Both thermochemically driven formose-type reaction and photochemically driven formose-type reaction likely occurred in asteroids and ice-dust grains in the early solar system. Thus, the present results suggest that the formation of ¹³C-enriched SOM was not specific to the cold outer protosolar disk or the molecular cloud but occurred more widely in the early solar system.

Copyright © 2021 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC).