Enantiomeric excesses of chiral amines in ammonia-rich carbonaceous meteorites

Abstract

Chiral homogeneity is essential to the structure and function of terrestrial biopolymers but the origin of this “homochirality” is poorly understood and remains one of the many unknowns surrounding the origins of life. Several amino acids extracted from Carbonaceous Chondrite meteorites display l-enantiomeric excesses (ee) and their findings have encouraged suggestions that an input of non-racemic meteoritic compounds to early Earth might have led to terrestrial homochirality. Motivated by occasional indications of possible ee in other classes of soluble meteoritic compounds, we have undertaken a systematic study of the chiral distribution of amines in Renazzo-type (CR) meteorites, where they are the second most abundant organic molecular species and ammonia is by far the most abundant single molecule. We report here the first time finding of l-ee for two chiral amines in several pristine CR meteorites from Antarctica and outline a proposal by which the compounds possibly formed from the same ketone precursors as some of the chiral amino acids. This would occur during a warm hydrous stage of the asteroidal parent body, via a reductive amination process in the presence of a large abundance of ammonia, where the precursors' adsorption upon mineral phases possessing asymmetry offered the opportunity for chiral induction. Because the precursor ketones are achiral, the proposal underscores the likelihood of diverse asymmetric influences and processes in cosmochemistry.