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Tracing the Primordial Chemical Life of Glycine: A Review from Quantum Chemical Simulations

Glycine (Gly), NH(2)CH(2)COOH, is the simplest amino acid. Although it has not been directly detected in the interstellar gas-phase medium, it has been identified in comets and meteorites, and its synthesis in these environments has been simulated in terrestrial laboratory experiments. Likewise, con...

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Autores principales: Rimola, Albert, Balucani, Nadia, Ceccarelli, Cecilia, Ugliengo, Piero
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9030215/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35457069
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijms23084252
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author Rimola, Albert
Balucani, Nadia
Ceccarelli, Cecilia
Ugliengo, Piero
author_facet Rimola, Albert
Balucani, Nadia
Ceccarelli, Cecilia
Ugliengo, Piero
author_sort Rimola, Albert
collection PubMed
description Glycine (Gly), NH(2)CH(2)COOH, is the simplest amino acid. Although it has not been directly detected in the interstellar gas-phase medium, it has been identified in comets and meteorites, and its synthesis in these environments has been simulated in terrestrial laboratory experiments. Likewise, condensation of Gly to form peptides in scenarios resembling those present in a primordial Earth has been demonstrated experimentally. Thus, Gly is a paradigmatic system for biomolecular building blocks to investigate how they can be synthesized in astrophysical environments, transported and delivered by fragments of asteroids (meteorites, once they land on Earth) and comets (interplanetary dust particles that land on Earth) to the primitive Earth, and there react to form biopolymers as a step towards the emergence of life. Quantum chemical investigations addressing these Gly-related events have been performed, providing fundamental atomic-scale information and quantitative energetic data. However, they are spread in the literature and difficult to harmonize in a consistent way due to different computational chemistry methodologies and model systems. This review aims to collect the work done so far to characterize, at a quantum mechanical level, the chemical life of Gly, i.e., from its synthesis in the interstellar medium up to its polymerization on Earth.
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spelling pubmed-90302152022-04-23 Tracing the Primordial Chemical Life of Glycine: A Review from Quantum Chemical Simulations Rimola, Albert Balucani, Nadia Ceccarelli, Cecilia Ugliengo, Piero Int J Mol Sci Review Glycine (Gly), NH(2)CH(2)COOH, is the simplest amino acid. Although it has not been directly detected in the interstellar gas-phase medium, it has been identified in comets and meteorites, and its synthesis in these environments has been simulated in terrestrial laboratory experiments. Likewise, condensation of Gly to form peptides in scenarios resembling those present in a primordial Earth has been demonstrated experimentally. Thus, Gly is a paradigmatic system for biomolecular building blocks to investigate how they can be synthesized in astrophysical environments, transported and delivered by fragments of asteroids (meteorites, once they land on Earth) and comets (interplanetary dust particles that land on Earth) to the primitive Earth, and there react to form biopolymers as a step towards the emergence of life. Quantum chemical investigations addressing these Gly-related events have been performed, providing fundamental atomic-scale information and quantitative energetic data. However, they are spread in the literature and difficult to harmonize in a consistent way due to different computational chemistry methodologies and model systems. This review aims to collect the work done so far to characterize, at a quantum mechanical level, the chemical life of Gly, i.e., from its synthesis in the interstellar medium up to its polymerization on Earth. MDPI 2022-04-12 /pmc/articles/PMC9030215/ /pubmed/35457069 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijms23084252 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Review
Rimola, Albert
Balucani, Nadia
Ceccarelli, Cecilia
Ugliengo, Piero
Tracing the Primordial Chemical Life of Glycine: A Review from Quantum Chemical Simulations
title Tracing the Primordial Chemical Life of Glycine: A Review from Quantum Chemical Simulations
title_full Tracing the Primordial Chemical Life of Glycine: A Review from Quantum Chemical Simulations
title_fullStr Tracing the Primordial Chemical Life of Glycine: A Review from Quantum Chemical Simulations
title_full_unstemmed Tracing the Primordial Chemical Life of Glycine: A Review from Quantum Chemical Simulations
title_short Tracing the Primordial Chemical Life of Glycine: A Review from Quantum Chemical Simulations
title_sort tracing the primordial chemical life of glycine: a review from quantum chemical simulations
topic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9030215/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35457069
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijms23084252
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