The stability of amino acids at submarine hydrothermal vent temperatures
- 1 June 1995
- journal article
- Published by Springer Nature in Origins of life and evolution of the biosphere
- Vol. 25 (1-3), 111-118
- https://doi.org/10.1007/bf01581577
Abstract
It has been postulated that amino acid stability at hydrothermal vent temperatures is controlled by a metastable thermodynamic equilibrium rather than by kinetics. Experiments reported here demonstrate that the amino acids are irreversibly destroyed by heating at 240 °C and that quasi-equilibrium calculations give misleading descriptions of the experimental observations. Equilibrium thermodynamic calculations are not applicable to organic compounds under high-temperature submarine vent conditions.Keywords
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