NITROGEN ISOTOPE ANALYSIS OF AMINO ACIDS IN
CARBONACEOUS CHONDRITES YAMATO 980115 AND
ALLAN HILLS A77003.
H.-S. Chan1, N. Ohkouchi1, Y. Takano1 and Y. Chikaraishi1.
Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, Japan.
E-mail: queeniechs@gmail.com.
Introduction: Carbonaceous Chondrites (CC) are primitive
meteorites that have not experienced extensive planetary differentiation. They also contain carbon up to 5% by weight, most ofwhich is organic in nature. It is speculated that these extraterrestrial materials might have contributed to a source of organic
compounds in the early-Earth. Among the wealth of organic materials in CC, soluble compounds such as amino acids demonstrate a crucial evolutionary significance as they are also themonomers of protein and enzymes that are indispensable to lifeon Earth. Like their terrestrial counterparts, some meteoritic amino acids also display chiral asymmetry [1, 2] and these abiotic
compounds may have biased Earth’s prebiotic organic inventorywith left-handedness that predated life’s origin.
The CCs CI (Ivuna) Yamato (Y) 980115 and CO (Ornans)
Allan Hills (ALH) A77003 respectively collected in Antarctica in1998 and 1977, were provided from the National Institute of Polar Research (NIPR) in Japan. In this study we determined aminoacid contents and stable nitrogen isotopic compositions of individual amino acids. The nitrogen isotopic compositions of aminoacids are indicative of their synthetic origins. This is a particularly important tool for determining the synthetic origins of achiralamino acids as enantiomeric analysis is not applicable for thesemolecules.
Results and Discussion: The distribution and enantiomericcomposition of amino acids in the meteorites were determinedusing a gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) and agas chromatography combustion isotope ratio mass spectrometry(GC/C/IRMS). The amino acid extraction and derivatization procedures employed in this study were based on a method describedin Takano et al. [3].
The result suggests that the meteorites are generally depleted
in amino acids, while only the terrestrial amino acid glycine wasdetected in Y-980115. Amino acids in extraterrestrial materials
are known to be enriched in 15N (higher than +60‰) relative toterrestrial counterparts (–10 to +20‰) [2, 4-5]. The δ15N value ofglycine in Y-980115 was as high as +145‰, which is clearly extraterrestrial. Therefore, although glycine is a common terrestrial
amino acid, this exceptionally high stable isotope value indicatesthat the glycine in Y-980115 is indigenous to the meteorite.
In short, despite the low amino acid abundance, it is determined that the meteorite Y-980115 may contain organic matterthat is of an extraterrestrial origin, and share the view that meteorites may have delivered abiotic compounds to the organic inventory of the Earth. The results also agree with previous studies
that some amino acids in Ivuna and Ornans are indigenous [6-7].
References: [1] Cronin, J. R. and Pizzarello S. 1997. Science
275:951–955. [2] Engel, M. H. and Macko S. A. 1997. Nature
389:265–268. [3] Takano, Y. et al. 2009. Anal. Chem. 81:394–399. [4] Epstein, S. et al. 1987. Nature 326:477–479. [5]Sephton, M. A. and Gilmour I. 2001. Mass Spectrometry Reviews
20:111–120. [6] Ehrenfreund, P. et al. 2001. Proceedings of theNational Academy of Sciences. 98:2138–2141. [7] Chan, H.-S. etal. 2012. Meteoritics & Planetary Science 47:1502–1516.