Prebiotic Organic Globules

Abstract

Analogs of organic globules observed in carbonaceous chondrite meteorites and in interplanetary dust particles and of rod to spherical structures observed in terrestrial archean microstructures have been synthesized in our experiments conducted with proton irradiation on a mixture of simple inorganic constituants, CO, N2 and H2O. Our analyses of these laboratory organic globules show that the proton irradiation residue contains proteinous and non-proteinous amino acid precursors. On the basis of morphology, of hydrothermal and mineral environment, we suggest that the meteoritic organic globules and the archean carbon microstructures could be composed of amino acid precursors.