Chemical gardens as analogs for prebiotic chemistry on ocean worlds

Abstract

Various studies have hypothesized that life on Earth may have originated near seafloor, mineral-rich hydrothermal vents. The use of laboratory analogs of these environments, such as chemical gardens, allows the creation of controlled, manipulable systems for studying potential prebiotic chemistry and origins-of-life scenarios on Earth and beyond. In this study, we tested reactions of prebiotically relevant organic anions, pyruvate and glyoxylate, in the presence of chemical gardens under a set of conditions relevant to the early Earth and the Saturnian moon Enceladus. Reactions were run for up to 3 weeks and then analyzed. Prebiotically relevant molecules were synthesized from organics reacted in the presence of chemical gardens under early-Earth-like conditions. As our reactants are readily available in geological settings, it is possible that similar self-organized structures could have played a role in prebiotic chemistry on early Earth or potentially even on other ocean-containing places in the solar system.