TY - JOUR
T1 - Organometallic compounds as carriers of extraterrestrial cyanide in primitive meteorites
AU - Smith, Karen E.
AU - House, Christopher H.
AU - Arevalo, Ricardo D.
AU - Dworkin, Jason P.
AU - Callahan, Michael P.
N1 - Funding Information:
Support for this project was provided by the NASA Emerging Worlds Program (11-COS11-0061 and NNX16AP59G) and NASA Astrobiology Institute via the Penn State Astrobiology Research Center (cooperative agreement #NNA09DA76A) and the Goddard Center for Astrobiology (CAN 5). K.E.S. also acknowledges support from the NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship and the NASA Pennsylvania Space Grant Consortium. We thank Prof. Eric Brown (Boise State University) for discussions and assistance with making one of the figures and the Plasma Mass Spectrometry Laboratory in the Department of Geology at the University of Maryland for use of their ICP-MS instrument. US Antarctic meteorite samples are recovered by the Antarctic Search for Meteorites (ANSMET) program, which has been funded by NSF and NASA, and characterized and curated by the Department of Mineral Sciences of the Smithsonian Institution and Astromaterials Acquisition and Curation Office at NASA Johnson Space Center.
PY - 2019/12/1
Y1 - 2019/12/1
N2 - Extraterrestrial delivery of cyanide may have been crucial for the origin of life on Earth since cyanide is involved in the abiotic synthesis of numerous organic compounds found in extant life; however, little is known about the abundance and species of cyanide present in meteorites. Here, we report cyanide abundance in a set of CM chondrites ranging from 50 ± 1 to 2472 ± 38 nmol·g−1, which relates to the degree of aqueous alteration of the meteorite and indicates that parent body processing influenced cyanide abundance. Analysis of the Lewis Cliff 85311 meteorite shows that its releasable cyanide is primarily in the form of [FeII(CN)5(CO)]3− and [FeII(CN)4(CO)2]2−. Meteoritic delivery of iron cyanocarbonyl complexes to early Earth likely provided an important point source of free cyanide. Iron cyanocarbonyl complexes may have served as precursors to the unusual FeII(CN)(CO) moieties that form the catalytic centers of hydrogenases, which are thought to be among the earliest enzymes.
AB - Extraterrestrial delivery of cyanide may have been crucial for the origin of life on Earth since cyanide is involved in the abiotic synthesis of numerous organic compounds found in extant life; however, little is known about the abundance and species of cyanide present in meteorites. Here, we report cyanide abundance in a set of CM chondrites ranging from 50 ± 1 to 2472 ± 38 nmol·g−1, which relates to the degree of aqueous alteration of the meteorite and indicates that parent body processing influenced cyanide abundance. Analysis of the Lewis Cliff 85311 meteorite shows that its releasable cyanide is primarily in the form of [FeII(CN)5(CO)]3− and [FeII(CN)4(CO)2]2−. Meteoritic delivery of iron cyanocarbonyl complexes to early Earth likely provided an important point source of free cyanide. Iron cyanocarbonyl complexes may have served as precursors to the unusual FeII(CN)(CO) moieties that form the catalytic centers of hydrogenases, which are thought to be among the earliest enzymes.
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U2 - 10.1038/s41467-019-10866-x
DO - 10.1038/s41467-019-10866-x
M3 - Article
C2 - 31239434
AN - SCOPUS:85068036469
VL - 10
JO - Nature Communications
JF - Nature Communications
SN - 2041-1723
IS - 1
M1 - 2777
ER -