HR: 0800h
AN: V31C-0609    [Abstracts]
TI: Sugar-Mineral Interactions and the Origins of Life
AU: * Kubista, L M
EM: kubistalaura@hotmail.com
AF: St. Norbert College, 100 Grant St., De Pere, WI 54115, United States
AU: Cleaves, H J
AF: Carnegie Institute of Washington Geophysical Laboratory, 5251 Broad Branch Rd., N.W, Washington, D.C 20015, United States
AB: Sugars may have been necessary for the origin of life, specifically in the initial abiological synthesis of RNA. One possible mechanism sugars could have formed on the primitive Earth is the formose reaction, the base-catalyzed polymerization of HCHO. This reaction provides a plethora of sugar products, none of them in particularly high yield relative to the others. Ribose, and its derivative deoxyribose, are the only sugars used in biological nucleic acids, if the formose reaction or something similar was responsible for the initial synthesis of sugars for biology, there must have been some mechanism by which ribose was selectively concentrated in the environment. It is hypothesized that stereochemistry of sugar molecules and their interaction with surrounding minerals may have provided one such mechanism. A formose solution was synthesized through the polymerization of formaldehyde. A technique was developed for the fluorescent derivitization of these sugars using dansyl-hydrazine. The derivitized sugars were then analyzed using an HPLC with UV-vis and fluorescence detection. To see if mineral-sugar interactions could provide some selectivity during fluid migration, formose mixtures were run through mineral columns (CaCO3 or beach sand (mostly quartz)) and the eluant was analyzed. There did appear to be some mild differences in the migration patterns of the various components. Since formose reactions typically must occur in concentrated solution, whereas the bulk concentration of HCHO in the primitive oceans was likely rather low, the eutectic synthesis of sugars, both in the presence and absence of Al2O3 and CaCO3, was performed to determine whether HCHO can be concentrated and reacted via this mechanism. This research provides a procedure for further study of mineral and sugar interactions.
DE: 1099 General or miscellaneous
SC: Volcanology, Geochemistry, Petrology [V]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting