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A non-energetic mechanism for glycine formation in the interstellar medium

Nature Astronomy volume 5, pages 197–205 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

The detection of the amino acid glycine and its amine precursor methylamine on the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko by the Rosetta mission provides strong evidence for a cosmic origin of amino acids on Earth. How and when such molecules form along the process of star formation remains debated. Here we report the laboratory detection of glycine formed in the solid phase through atom and radical–radical addition surface reactions under dark interstellar cloud conditions. Our experiments, supported by astrochemical models, suggest that glycine forms without the need for ‘energetic’ irradiation (such as ultraviolet photons and cosmic rays) in interstellar water-rich ices, where it remains preserved, during a much earlier star-formation stage than previously assumed. We also confirm that solid methylamine is an important side-reaction product. A prestellar formation of glycine on ice grains provides the basis for a complex and ubiquitous prebiotic chemistry in space enriching the chemical content of planet-forming material.

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Fig. 1: Schematic of surface reaction routes leading to the formation of glycine in a water-rich ice during early stages of low-mass stellar evolution.
Fig. 2: QMS-TPD data of four equivalent laboratory experiments on the surface formation of glycine and its isotopologues.
Fig. 3: QMS-TPD data of non-fragmented glycine formed at 13 K and desorbed at 245 K.
Fig. 4: RAIR data showing the presence of glycine ice in experiment 1.
Fig. 5: Abundances of solid species, including glycine and species involved in its surface formation, with respect to gas-phase H during the collapse of a prestellar core from Model 2.

Data availability

The data that support the plots within this paper and other findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Code availability

The codes for Models 1 and 2 are proprietary, but the input and output data are available from the corresponding author upon request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank T. Lamberts and I. Jiménez-Serra for stimulating discussions. This research was funded through a VICI grant of the NWO (the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research) and A-ERC grant number 291141 (CHEMPLAN). Financial support from the Danish National Research Foundation through the Center of Excellence ‘InterCat’ (Grant agreement no. DNRF150) and from NOVA (the Netherlands Research School for Astronomy) and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) through a professor prize is acknowledged. S.I. acknowledges the Royal Society for financial support through the University Research Fellowship (grant number UF130409), the University Research Fellowship Renewal 2019 (grant number URF\R\191018), the Research Fellows Enhancement Award (grant number RGF\EA\180306) and the Holland Research School for Molecular Chemistry (HRSMC) for a travel grant. G.F. acknowledges financial support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions grant agreement number 664931 and support from an ‘iALMA’ grant (CUP C52I13000140001) approved by MIUR (Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Universitá e della Ricerca). A.R.C. and R.T.G. thank the NASA Astrophysics Research and Analysis Research programme for funding through grant number NNX15AG07G. V.K. was funded by the NWO PEPSci (Planetary and ExoPlanetary Science) programme. This work benefited from collaborations within the framework of the FP7 ITN LASSIE consortium (grant number GA238258).

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Author notes

  1. V. Kofman

    Present address: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK

    S. Ioppolo

  2. Laboratory for Astrophysics, Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, Leiden, the Netherlands

    G. Fedoseev, D. Qasim, V. Kofman & H. Linnartz

  3. Research Laboratory for Astrochemistry, Ural Federal University, Ekaterinburg, Russia

    G. Fedoseev

  4. Laboratory Astrophysics Group of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Institute of Solid State Physics, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Jena, Germany

    K.-J. Chuang

  5. Theoretical & Computational Chemistry, Institute for Molecules and Materials, Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands

    H. M. Cuppen

  6. Department of Chemistry, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA

    A. R. Clements, M. Jin & R. T. Garrod

  7. Department of Astronomy, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA

    R. T. Garrod

  8. Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, Leiden, the Netherlands

    E. F. van Dishoeck

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Contributions

S.I. initiated and managed the project and wrote the manuscript with assistance from H.L., H.M.C., A.R.C., R.T.G., G.F. and K.-J.C. E.F.v.D. linked the laboratory and modelling results to astronomical observations. S.I., K.-J.C., G.F., D.Q. and V.K. performed laboratory experiments. H.L. was responsible for laboratory management. H.M.C., A.R.C. and R.T.G. developed and ran kinetic Monte Carlo simulations. M.J. and R.T.G. developed and ran the gas–grain kinetics models. All authors contributed to data interpretation and commented on the paper.

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Correspondence to S. Ioppolo.

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–8, Tables 1–5 and text.

Supplementary Data

Reaction network as included in Model 1.

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Ioppolo, S., Fedoseev, G., Chuang, KJ. et al. A non-energetic mechanism for glycine formation in the interstellar medium. Nat Astron 5, 197–205 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-020-01249-0

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