Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-16T03:25:16.531Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Complex structures synthesized in shock processing of nucleobases – implications to the origins of life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 May 2021

V. S. Surendra Open the ORCID record for V. S. Surendra [Opens in a new window] ,
V. Jayaram ,
M. Muruganantham ,
T. Vijay ,
S. Vijayan ,
P. Samarth ,
H. Hill ,
Anil Bhardwaj Open the ORCID record for Anil Bhardwaj [Opens in a new window] ,
N. J. Mason  and
B. Sivaraman Open the ORCID record for B. Sivaraman [Opens in a new window]
V. S. Surendra*
Affiliation:
Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, India
V. Jayaram
Affiliation:
Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India
M. Muruganantham
Affiliation:
Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, India
T. Vijay
Affiliation:
Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, India
S. Vijayan
Affiliation:
Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, India
P. Samarth
Affiliation:
International Space University, Illkirch-Graffenstaden, France
H. Hill
Affiliation:
International Space University, Illkirch-Graffenstaden, France
Anil Bhardwaj
Affiliation:
Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, India
N. J. Mason
Affiliation:
School of Physical Sciences, The University of Kent, Canterbury, UK
B. Sivaraman*
Affiliation:
Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, India
*
Authors for correspondence: V. S. Surendra, E-mail: [email protected]; B. Sivaraman, E-mail: [email protected]
Authors for correspondence: V. S. Surendra, E-mail: [email protected]; B. Sivaraman, E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Nucleobases are nitrogenous bases composed of monomers that are a major constituent of RNA and DNA, which are an essential part of any cellular life on the Earth. The search for nucleobases in the interstellar medium remains a major challenge, however, the recent detection of nucleobases in meteorite samples and laboratory synthesis in simulated analogue experiments have confirmed their abiotic origin and a possible route for their delivery to the Earth. Nevertheless, cellular life is based on the interacting network of complex structures, and there is substantial lack of information on the possible routes by which such ordered structures may be formed in the prebiotic environment. In the current study, we present the evidence for the synthesis of complex structures due to shock processing of nucleobases. The nucleobases were subjected to the reflected shock temperature of 3500–7000 K (estimated) and pressure of about 15–34 bar for over ~2 ms timescale. Under such extreme thermodynamic conditions, the nucleobases sample experiences superheating and subsequent cooling. Electron microscopic studies of shock processed residue show that nucleobases result in spontaneous formation of complex structures when subjected to extreme conditions of shock. These results suggest that impact shock processes might have contributed to the self-assembly of biologically relevant structures and the origin of life.

Keywords

Astrobiologycomplex structuresimpact shocknucleobasesorigin of lifeself-assembly
Type
Research Article
Information
International Journal of Astrobiology , Volume 20 , Issue 4 , August 2021 , pp. 285 - 293
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Currently at: National Institute of Oceanography, Goa, India.

References

Bar-Nun, A, Bar-Nun, N, Bauer, S and Sagan, C (1970) Shock synthesis of amino acids in simulated primitive environments. Science 168, 470–472.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Barks, HL, Buckley, R, Grieves, GA, Di Mauro, E, Hud, NV and Orlando, TM (2010) Guanine, adenine, and hypoxanthine production in UV-irradiated formamide solutions: relaxation of the requirements for prebiotic purine nucleobase formation. ChemBioChem 11, 1240–1243.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Benner, SA, Kim, H-J and Carrigan, MA (2012) Asphalt, water, and the prebiotic synthesis of ribose, ribonucleosides, and RNA. Accounts of Chemical Research 45, 2025–2034.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bhowmik, S and Krishnamurthy, R (2019) The role of sugar-backbone heterogeneity and chimeras in the simultaneous emergence of RNA and DNA. Nature Chemistry 11, 1009–1018.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Biennier, L, Jayaram, V, Suas-David, N, Georges, R, Singh, MK, Arunan, E, Kassi, S, Dartois, E and Reddy, K (2017) Shock-wave processing of C60 in hydrogen. Astronomy & Astrophysics 599, A42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blank, JG, Miller, GH, Ahrens, MJ and Winans, RE (2001) Experimental shock chemistry of aqueous amino acid solutions and the cometary delivery of prebiotic compounds. Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere 31, 15–51.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Burton, AS, Stern, JC, Elsila, JE, Glavin, DP and Dworkin, JP (2012) Understanding prebiotic chemistry through the analysis of extraterrestrial amino acids and nucleobases in meteorites. Chemical Society Reviews 41, 5459–5472.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Callahan, MP, Smith, KE, Cleaves, HJ, Ruzicka, J, Stern, JC, Glavin, DP, House, CH and Dworkin, JP (2011) Carbonaceous meteorites contain a wide range of extraterrestrial nucleobases. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108, 13995–13998.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chyba, C and Sagan, C (1992) Endogenous production, exogenous delivery and impact-shock synthesis of organic molecules: an inventory for the origins of life. Nature 355, 125–132.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chyba, CF, Thomas, PJ, Brookshaw, L and Sagan, C (1990) Cometary delivery of organic molecules to the early Earth. Science 249, 366–373.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Civiš, S, Szabla, R, Szyja, BM, Smykowski, D, Ivanek, O, Knížek, A, Kubelík, P, Šponer, J, Ferus, M and Šponer, JE (2016) TiO2-catalyzed synthesis of sugars from formaldehyde in extraterrestrial impacts on the early Earth. Scientific reports 6, 1–8.Google ScholarPubMed
Deamer, DW and Pashley, R (1989) Amphiphilic components of the Murchison carbonaceous chondrite: surface properties and membrane formation. Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere 19, 21–38.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dworkin, JP, Deamer, DW, Sandford, SA and Allamandola, LJ (2001) Self-assembling amphiphilic molecules: synthesis in simulated interstellar/precometary ices. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 98, 815–819.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ebert, M, Hecht, L, Hamann, C and Luther, R (2017) Laser-induced melting experiments: simulation of short-term high-temperature impact processes. Meteoritics & Planetary Science 52, 1475–1494.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferus, M, Michalcikova, R, Shestivská, V, Šponer, JÍ, Šponer, JE and Civiš, S (2014) High-energy chemistry of formamide: a simpler way for nucleobase formation. The Journal of Physical Chemistry A 118, 719–736.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ferus, M, Nesvorný, D, Šponer, J, Kubelík, P, Michalčíková, R, Shestivská, V, Šponer, JE and Civiš, S (2015) High-energy chemistry of formamide: a unified mechanism of nucleobase formation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112, 657–662.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ferus, M, Pietrucci, F, Saitta, AM, Knížek, A, Kubelík, P, Ivanek, O, Shestivska, V and Civiš, S (2017) Formation of nucleobases in a Miller–Urey reducing atmosphere. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114, 4306–4311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferus, M, Pietrucci, F, Saitta, A, Ivanek, O, Knizek, A, Kubelík, P, Krus, M, Juha, L, Dudzak, R and Dostál, J (2019) Prebiotic synthesis initiated in formaldehyde by laser plasma simulating high-velocity impacts. Astronomy & Astrophysics 626, A52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Folsome, CE (1976) Synthetic organic microstructures and the origins of cellular life. Naturwissenschaften 63, 303–306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fox, S (1973) Origin of the cell: experiments and premises. Naturwissenschaften 60, 359–368.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Furukawa, Y, Nakazawa, H, Sekine, T, Kobayashi, T and Kakegawa, T (2015) Nucleobase and amino acid formation through impacts of meteorites on the early ocean. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 429, 216–222.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Furukawa, Y, Chikaraishi, Y, Ohkouchi, N, Ogawa, NO, Glavin, DP, Dworkin, JP, Abe, C and Nakamura, T (2019) Extraterrestrial ribose and other sugars in primitive meteorites. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116, 24440–24445.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gaydon, AG and Hurle, IR (1963) The Shock Tube in High-Temperature Chemical Physics. New York: Reinhold Publishing Corporation.Google Scholar
Gerasimov, M, Ivanov, B, Yakovlev, O and Dikov, YP (1998) Physics and chemistry of impacts. Earth, Moon, and Planets 80, 209–259.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldman, N and Tamblyn, I (2013) Prebiotic chemistry within a simple impacting icy mixture. The Journal of Physical Chemistry A 117, 5124–5131.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jia, TZ and Kuruma, Y (2019) Recent advances in origins of life research by biophysicists in Japan. Challenges 10, 28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, SC, Zhou, L, Zhang, W, O'flaherty, DK, Rondo-Brovetto, V and Szostak, JW (2020) A model for the emergence of RNA from a prebiotically plausible mixture of ribonucleotides, arabinonucleotides, and 2′-deoxynucleotides. Journal of the American Chemical Society 142, 2317–2326.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koeberl, C, Reimold, WU, Mcdonald, I and Rosing, M (2000) Search for petrographic and geochemical evidence for the late heavy bombardment on Earth in early Archean rocks from Isua, Greenland. In Impacts and the Early Earth. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, pp. 73–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lingam, M and Loeb, A (2021) Life in the Cosmos: From Biosignatures to Technosignatures. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Luisi, PL (2016) The Emergence of Life: From Chemical Origins to Synthetic Biology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mann, S (2012) Systems of creation: the emergence of life from nonliving matter. Accounts of Chemical Research 45, 2131–2141.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Martins, Z (2018) The nitrogen heterocycle content of meteorites and their significance for the origin of life. Life 8, 28.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Martins, Z, Botta, O, Fogel, ML, Sephton, MA, Glavin, DP, Watson, JS, Dworkin, JP, Schwartz, AW and Ehrenfreund, P (2008) Extraterrestrial nucleobases in the Murchison meteorite. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 270, 130–136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martins, Z, Price, MC, Goldman, N, Sephton, MA and Burchell, MJ (2013) Shock synthesis of amino acids from impacting cometary and icy planet surface analogues. Nature Geoscience 6, 1045–1049.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Materese, CK, Nuevo, M and Sandford, SA (2017) The formation of nucleobases from the ultraviolet photoirradiation of purine in simple astrophysical ice analogues. Astrobiology 17, 761–770.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mayer, C (2020) Life in the context of order and complexity. Life 10, 5.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mckay, CP and Borucki, WJ (1997) Organic synthesis in experimental impact shocks. Science 276, 390–392.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Menor-Salván, C (2018) Prebiotic Chemistry and Chemical Evolution of Nucleic Acids. Switzerland GmbH: Springer Nature.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Menor-Salván, C and Marín-Yaseli, MR (2013) A new route for the prebiotic synthesis of nucleobases and hydantoins in water/ice solutions involving the photochemistry of acetylene. Chemistry 19, 6488–6497.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Menor-Salván, C, Ruiz-Bermejo, M, Guzmán, MI, Osuna-Esteban, S and Veintemillas-Verdaguer, S (2009) Synthesis of pyrimidines and triazines in ice: implications for the prebiotic chemistry of nucleobases. Chemistry 15, 4411–4418.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nuevo, M, Milam, SN, Sandford, SA, Elsila, JE and Dworkin, JP (2009) Formation of uracil from the ultraviolet photo-irradiation of pyrimidine in pure H2O ices. Astrobiology 9, 683–695.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nuevo, M, Milam, SN and Sandford, SA (2012) Nucleobases and prebiotic molecules in organic residues produced from the ultraviolet photo-irradiation of pyrimidine in NH3 and H2O + NH3 ices. Astrobiology 12, 295–314.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nuevo, M, Cooper, G and Sandford, SA (2018) Deoxyribose and deoxysugar derivatives from photoprocessed astrophysical ice analogues and comparison to meteorites. Nature Communications 9, 1–10.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Oba, Y, Takano, Y, Naraoka, H, Watanabe, N and Kouchi, A (2019) Nucleobase synthesis in interstellar ices. Nature Communications 10, 1–8.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Oró, J (1960) Synthesis of adenine from ammonium cyanide. Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications 2, 407–412.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oró, J and Kimball, A (1961) Synthesis of purines under possible primitive earth conditions. I. Adenine from hydrogen cyanide. Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics 94, 217–227.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Otake, T, Taniguchi, T, Furukawa, Y, Kawamura, F, Nakazawa, H and Kakegawa, T (2011) Stability of amino acids and their oligomerization under high-pressure conditions: implications for prebiotic chemistry. Astrobiology 11, 799–813.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pizzarello, S and Shock, E (2010) The organic composition of carbonaceous meteorites: the evolutionary story ahead of biochemistry. Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology 2, a002105.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pizzarello, S and Shock, E (2017) Carbonaceous chondrite meteorites: the chronicle of a potential evolutionary path between stars and life. Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres 47, 249–260.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rios, AC (2015) Impact synthesis of the RNA bases. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112, 643–644.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Saladino, R, Crestini, C, Ciciriello, F, Costanzo, G and Di Mauro, E (2006) About a formamide-based origin of informational polymers: syntheses of nucleobases and favourable thermodynamic niches for early polymers. Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres 36, 523–531.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Simionescu, C, Denes, F and Totolin, M (1985) The formation of some lipid-like structures under cold conditions. Bioelectrochemistry and Bioenergetics 14, 429–437.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Singh, SV, Vishakantaiah, J, Meka, JK, Sivaprahasam, V, Chandrasekaran, V, Thombre, R, Thiruvenkatam, V, Mallya, A, Rajasekhar, BN and Muruganantham, M (2020) Shock processing of amino acids leading to complex structures—implications to the origin of life. Molecules 25, 5634.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sugahara, H and Mimura, K (2014) Glycine oligomerization up to triglycine by shock experiments simulating comet impacts. Geochemical Journal 48, 51–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sugahara, H and Mimura, K (2015) Peptide synthesis triggered by comet impacts: a possible method for peptide delivery to the early Earth and icy satellites. Icarus 257, 103–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Szostak, JW, Bartel, DP and Luisi, PL (2001) Synthesizing life. Nature 409, 387–390.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Valladas-Dubois, S and Prudhomme, R (1983) Formation of microspheres from simple molecules under simulated primitive earth conditions; ultrasound and light radiation. Experientia 39, 571–573.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Venkateshaiah, A, Padil, VV, Nagalakshmaiah, M, Waclawek, S, Černík, M and Varma, RS (2020) Microscopic techniques for the analysis of micro and nanostructures of biopolymers and their derivatives. Polymers 12, 512.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Xu, J, Chmela, V, Green, NJ, Russell, DA, Janicki, MJ, Góra, RW, Szabla, R, Bond, AD and Sutherland, JD (2020) Selective prebiotic formation of RNA pyrimidine and DNA purine nucleosides. Nature 582, 60–66.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Yanagawa, H, Ogawa, Y, Kojima, K and Ito, M (1988) Construction of protocellular structures under simulated primitive earth conditions. Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere 18, 179–207.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zhang, S (2012) Lipid-like self-assembling peptides. Accounts of Chemical Research 45, 2142–2150.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Supplementary material: File

Surendra et al. supplementary material

Surendra et al. supplementary material

Download Surendra et al. supplementary material(File)
File 6.8 MB