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Fluorine-Rich Planetary Environments as Possible Habitats for Life

In polar aprotic organic solvents, fluorine might be an element of choice for life that uses selected fluorinated building blocks as monomers of choice for self-assembling of its catalytic polymers. Organofluorine compounds are extremely rare in the chemistry of life as we know it. Biomolecules, whe...

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Autores principales: Budisa, Nediljko, Kubyshkin, Vladimir, Schulze-Makuch, Dirk
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4206852/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25370378
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/life4030374
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author Budisa, Nediljko
Kubyshkin, Vladimir
Schulze-Makuch, Dirk
author_facet Budisa, Nediljko
Kubyshkin, Vladimir
Schulze-Makuch, Dirk
author_sort Budisa, Nediljko
collection PubMed
description In polar aprotic organic solvents, fluorine might be an element of choice for life that uses selected fluorinated building blocks as monomers of choice for self-assembling of its catalytic polymers. Organofluorine compounds are extremely rare in the chemistry of life as we know it. Biomolecules, when fluorinated such as peptides or proteins, exhibit a “fluorous effect”, i.e., they are fluorophilic (neither hydrophilic nor lipophilic). Such polymers, capable of creating self-sorting assemblies, resist denaturation by organic solvents by exclusion of fluorocarbon side chains from the organic phase. Fluorous cores consist of a compact interior, which is shielded from the surrounding solvent. Thus, we can anticipate that fluorine-containing “teflon”-like or “non-sticking” building blocks might be monomers of choice for the synthesis of organized polymeric structures in fluorine-rich planetary environments. Although no fluorine-rich planetary environment is known, theoretical considerations might help us to define chemistries that might support life in such environments. For example, one scenario is that all molecular oxygen may be used up by oxidation reactions on a planetary surface and fluorine gas could be released from F-rich magma later in the history of a planetary body to result in a fluorine-rich planetary environment.
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spelling pubmed-42068522014-10-27 Fluorine-Rich Planetary Environments as Possible Habitats for Life Budisa, Nediljko Kubyshkin, Vladimir Schulze-Makuch, Dirk Life (Basel) Communication In polar aprotic organic solvents, fluorine might be an element of choice for life that uses selected fluorinated building blocks as monomers of choice for self-assembling of its catalytic polymers. Organofluorine compounds are extremely rare in the chemistry of life as we know it. Biomolecules, when fluorinated such as peptides or proteins, exhibit a “fluorous effect”, i.e., they are fluorophilic (neither hydrophilic nor lipophilic). Such polymers, capable of creating self-sorting assemblies, resist denaturation by organic solvents by exclusion of fluorocarbon side chains from the organic phase. Fluorous cores consist of a compact interior, which is shielded from the surrounding solvent. Thus, we can anticipate that fluorine-containing “teflon”-like or “non-sticking” building blocks might be monomers of choice for the synthesis of organized polymeric structures in fluorine-rich planetary environments. Although no fluorine-rich planetary environment is known, theoretical considerations might help us to define chemistries that might support life in such environments. For example, one scenario is that all molecular oxygen may be used up by oxidation reactions on a planetary surface and fluorine gas could be released from F-rich magma later in the history of a planetary body to result in a fluorine-rich planetary environment. MDPI 2014-08-18 /pmc/articles/PMC4206852/ /pubmed/25370378 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/life4030374 Text en © 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).
spellingShingle Communication
Budisa, Nediljko
Kubyshkin, Vladimir
Schulze-Makuch, Dirk
Fluorine-Rich Planetary Environments as Possible Habitats for Life
title Fluorine-Rich Planetary Environments as Possible Habitats for Life
title_full Fluorine-Rich Planetary Environments as Possible Habitats for Life
title_fullStr Fluorine-Rich Planetary Environments as Possible Habitats for Life
title_full_unstemmed Fluorine-Rich Planetary Environments as Possible Habitats for Life
title_short Fluorine-Rich Planetary Environments as Possible Habitats for Life
title_sort fluorine-rich planetary environments as possible habitats for life
topic Communication
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4206852/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25370378
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/life4030374
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