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Mineral Surface Chemistry Control for Origin of Prebiotic Peptides

Erastova, Valentina; Degiacomi, Matteo T.; Fraser, Donald; Greenwell, H. Chris

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Authors

Valentina Erastova

Donald Fraser



Abstract

Some seventy years ago, John Desmond Bernal proposed a role for clays in the origin of life. While much research has since been dedicated to the study of silicate clays, layered double hydroxides, believed to be common on the early Earth, have received only limited attention. Here we examine the role that layered hydroxides could have played in prebiotic peptide formation. We demonstrate how these minerals can concentrate, align and act as adsorption templates for amino acids, and during wetting—drying cycles, promote peptide bond formation. This enables us to propose a testable mechanism for the growth of peptides at layered double hydroxide interfaces in an early Earth environment. Our results provide insights into the potential role of mineral surfaces in mimicking aspects of biochemical reaction pathways.

Citation

Erastova, V., Degiacomi, M. T., Fraser, D., & Greenwell, H. C. (2017). Mineral Surface Chemistry Control for Origin of Prebiotic Peptides. Nature Communications, 8, Article 2033. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-02248-y

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Nov 15, 2017
Online Publication Date Dec 11, 2017
Publication Date Dec 11, 2017
Deposit Date Nov 9, 2017
Publicly Available Date Dec 11, 2017
Journal Nature Communications
Publisher Nature Research
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 8
Article Number 2033
DOI https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-02248-y

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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.





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