Month: September 2022

D-AMINO ACIDS IN METEORITES. "Serine and threonine, usually considered to be earthly contaminants, were conspicuously absent in the samples...diamino acids was identified in the Murchison meteorite." https://lnkd.in/e6T2vir View in LinkedIn

MURCHISON METEORITE. "The initial report stated that the amino acids were racemic and therefore formed in an abiotic manner because amino acids of terrestrial proteins are all of the L-configuration." https://lnkd.in/e6T2vir View in LinkedIn

MURCHISON METEORITE. L-alanine was also later found in living creatures leading to terrestrial contamination accusations. https://lnkd.in/e6T2vir View in LinkedIn

MURCHISON. "In 1997, L-excesses were also found in a non-protein amino acid, isovaline, suggesting an extraterrestrial source for molecular asymmetry in the Solar System." https://lnkd.in/e6T2vir View in LinkedIn

MURCHISON. "At the same time, L-excesses of alanine were again found in Murchison but now with enrichment in the isotope 15N, however, the isotopic pairing was later contested on analytical grounds." https://lnkd.in/e6T2vir View in LinkedIn

EXTRATERRESTIAL. "The finding of small but significant L-enantiomeric excesses (ee) in some amino acids of carbonaceous meteorites that are rare or unknown in the biosphere appears to indicate that interstellar and planetary chemical evolution (i.e., purely physicochemical abiotic processes) could yield chiral asymmetry." https://lnkd.in/eVkEQQj View in LinkedIn

GEORGE CHURCH AND LEFTIES. Mirror life thought experiment: "create a life form that runs on a different operating system from our own, based in mirror-image versions of earthly protein and DNA. Let these alien cells grow and mutate, and see how they survive." https://lnkd.in/epWqxGi View in LinkedIn

COMMON GATEWAY TO NEW PROPERTIES. "Spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking underpins a variety of areas such as subatomic physics and biochemistry, and leads to an impressive range of fundamental phenomena." https://lnkd.in/eqFnZCi View in LinkedIn

UNUSUAL PROPERTIES of materials, either intrinsic or artificially created, represents an opportunity to exploit those properties for programmable materials or for making useful technologies. Nature provides an infinite number of examples, many of which were innocently discovered by exploring coloration and light diffraction from natural objects. https://lnkd.in/e2grmv8 View in LinkedIn

NANO PROPERTIES. "A majority of biological processes occur at the nanoscale...these phenomena are based in "quantum effects". Properties of materials are size-dependent in this scale range." https://lnkd.in/e-N6F8s View in LinkedIn