Excessos enantioméricos no meteorito Murchison e a origem da homoquiralidade na biologia terrestre

Enantiomeric excesses in the Murchison meteorite and the origin of homochirality in terrestrial biology

Jeffrey L. Bada,1

+Author Affiliations

Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0212

Breslow and Cheng have recently proposed a scheme for how the enantiomeric excesses (ee) found for some non-protein amino acids in the Murchison carbonaceous chondrite might have been involved in the origin of biochemical homochirality on Earth (1). However, there is a central problem with their scenario: it would be difficult for any ee in non-protein amino acids such as isovaline to be efficiently delivered to the early Earth in significant amounts.

Meteorites such as Murchison represent only a tiny fraction of the …

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1E-mail: jbada@ucsd.edu