Astrobiological exploration of RNA oligomerization and reaction product characterization for prebiotically based chemical reactions
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Authors
Burcar, Bradley Thomas
Issue Date
2015-08
Type
Electronic thesis
Thesis
Thesis
Language
ENG
Keywords
Chemistry
Alternative Title
Abstract
The formation of aggregates from circular and linear oligomers from conventional prebiotic reactions using activated nucleotides and montmorillonite clay catalysts are shown and characterized using MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry. These non-covalent aggregates can lead to misclassification of reaction products and may interfere with proper interpretation of results utilizing a number of analytical techniques. This aggregation was also shown to be enhanced under high pressure conditions of 5 and 10 kbar. This aggregation appears to not inhibit the formation of long oligomers for the investigated reactions at 5 kbar, but may play a significant role in inhibiting oligomerization at 10 kbar.
Description
August 2015
School of Science
School of Science
Full Citation
Publisher
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY