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Título del libro: Cyanide: Occurrence, Characteristics And Applications
Título del capítulo: The role of hydrogen cyanide in the origin of Life

Autores UNAM:
ALICIA NEGRON MENDOZA; ALEJANDRO HEREDIA BARBERO; MARIA COLIN GARCIA; SERGIO AGUSTIN RAMOS BERNAL;
Autores externos:

Idioma:
Inglés
Año de publicación:
2013
Resumen:

Chemical evolution encompasses physical and chemical processes that took place on Earth before the appearance of life. To simulate the chemical process that may have occurred, a heterogeneous medium is geologically more likely to succeed than a homogeneous phase. The main interest of this research is to stress the relevance of radiation chemistry as a tool to elucidate the importance of ionizing radiation to study the formation of biologically-relevant compounds from HCN and its derivatives and to remark on the importance of the chemical reactions that may occur at hydrosphere/lithosphere interfaces. To this end, we study the adsorption capacity of HCN in different surface minerals that may have been present in the primordial epoch and study the chemical reactions that occur when the system HCN-mineral surface is exposed to a high-energy source. These studies show that HCN can be adsorbed readily from the surfaces studied. This adsorption is influenced by pH and type of adsorbent. Irradiation of HCN solutions produced simple organic compounds and an oligomeric material that, upon hydrolysis, yields compounds of biological importance such as amino acids, carboxylic acids, and purines. These products are formed even at low temperatures and low radiation doses. This work strongly reinforces the hypothesis of the central role of HCN as a parent molecule in the process of chemical evolution on early Earth, comets, and other extraterrestrial environments and the use of ionizing radiation as an energy source to induce chemical changes in these systems. © 2013 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.


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