¹Julie E. M. McGeoch,²Malcolm W. McGeoch

¹Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
²PLEX LLC, Fall River, Massachusetts, USA

It has been proposed that exothermic gas phase polymerization of amino acids can occur in the conditions of a warm dense molecular cloud to form hydrophobic polymer amide (HPA) (McGeoch and McGeoch 2014). In a search for evidence of this presolar chemistry Allende and Murchison meteorites and a volcano control were diamond burr-etched and Folch extracted for potential HPA yielding 85 unique peaks in the meteorite samples via matrix-assisted laser desorption time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI TOF/MS). The amino acids after acid hydrolysis in Allende were below the level of detection but many of the Allende peaks via the more sensitive MALDI/TOF analysis could be fitted to a polymer combination of glycine, alanine, and alpha-hydroxyglycine with high statistical significance. A similar significant fit using these three amino acids could not be applied to the Murchison data indicating more complex polymer chemistry.

Reference
McGeoch JEM, McGeoch MW (2015) Polymer amide in the Allende and Murchison meteorites. Meteoritics & Planetary Science (in Press)
Link to Article [DOI: 10.1111/maps.12558]

Published by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons