Amino acids in the Tagish Lake Meteorite

Abstract

High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) based amino acid analysis of a Tagish Lake meteorite sample recovered three months after the meteorite fell to Earth have revealed that the amino acid composition of Tagish Lake is strikingly different from that of the CM and CI carbonaceous chondrites. We found that the Tagish Lake meteorite contains only trace levels of amino acids (total abundance = 880 parts per billion, ppb), which is much lower than the total abundance of amino acids in the CI Orgueil (4,100 ppb) and the CM Murchison (16,900 ppb). Because most of the same amino acids found in the Tagish Lake meteorite are also present in the Tagish Lake ice melt water, we conclude that the amino acids detected in the meteorite are terrestrial contamination. We found that the exposure of a sample of Murchison to cold water lead to a substantial reduction over a period of several weeks in the amount of amino acids that are not strongly bound to the meteorite matrix. However, strongly bound amino acids that are extracted by direct HCl hydrolysis, are not affected by the leaching process. Thus even if there had been leaching of amino acids from our Tagish Lake meteorite sample during its three month residence in Tagish Lake ice and melt water, a Murchison type abundance of endogenous amino acids in the meteorite would have still been readily detectable. The low amino acid content of Tagish Lake indicates that this meteorite originated from a different type of parent body than the CM's and CI's. The parent body was apparently devoid of the reagents such as aldehyldes/ketones, HCN and ammonia needed for the effective abiotic synthesis of amino acids. Based on reflectance spectral measurements, Tagish Lake has been associated with P or D- type asteroids. If the Tagish Lake meteorite was indeed derived from these types of parent bodies, our understanding of these primitive asteroids needs to be re-evaluated with respect to their potential inventory of biologically important organic compounds.