Other
Scientific paper
Dec 1991
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1991icar...94..354m&link_type=abstract
Icarus, Volume 94, Issue 2, p. 354-367.
Other
20
Scientific paper
The organic solid (tholin) produced by spark discharge in a CH4 + NH3 + H2O atmosphere is investigated, along with the separable components of its water-soluble fraction. The chemistry of this material serves as a provisional model for the interaction of Jovian organic heteropolymers with the deep aqueous clouds of Jupiter. Intact (unhydrolyzed) tholin is resolved into four chemically distinct fractions by high-pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC). Gel filtration chromatography reveals abundant components at molecular weights ⋍600-700 and 200-300 Da. Gas chromatography/mass spectrometry of derivatized hydrolysis products of unfractionated tholin shows about 10% by mass protein and nonprotein amino acids, chiefly glycine, alanine, aspartic acid, β-alanine, and β-aminobutyric acid, and 12% by mass other organic acids and hydroxy acids. The stereospecificity of alanine is investigated and shown to be racemic. The four principal HPLC fractions yield distinctly different proportions of amino acids. Chemical tests show that small peptides or organic molecules containing multiple amino acid precursors are a possibility in the intact tholins, but substantial quantities of large peptides are not indicated. Candidate 700-Da molecules have a central unsaturated, hydrocarbon- and nitrile-rich core, linked by acid-labile (ester or amide) bonds to amino acid and carboxylic acid side groups. The core is probably not HCN ``polymer.'' The concentration of amino acids from tholin hydrolysis in the lower aqueous clouds of Jupiter, about 0.1 μM, is enough to maintain small populations of terrestrial microorganisms even if the amino acids must serve as the sole carbon source.
Khare Bishun N.
McDonald Gene D.
Reid Thompson W.
Sagan Carl
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