Shielding from UV Photodamage: Implications for Surficial Origins of Life Chemistry on the Early Earth.

ABSTRACT: UV light has been invoked as a source of energy for driving prebiotic chemistry, but such high energy photons are also known to cause damage to biomolecules and their precursors. One potential mechanism for increasing the lifetime of UV-photounstable molecules is to invoke a protection or shielding mechanism. UV shielding could either occur by the molecule in question itself (self-shielding) or by the presence of other UV-absorbing molecules. We investigate and illustrate these two shielding mechanisms as means of increasing the lifetime of 2-aminooxazole (AO), a prebiotic precursor molecule moderately susceptible to UV photodamage, with an expected half-life of 7 h on the surface of the early Earth. AO can be protected by being present in high concentrations, such that it self-shields. AO

SUBMITTER: Todd ZR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9616438 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature