Alkaline hydrothermal vent environments have gained much attention as potential sites for abiotic synthesis of a range of organic molecules. However, the key process of peptide formation has generally been undertaken at lower pH and using dissolved copper ions to enhance selectivity and reactivity. Here, we explore whether layered precipitate minerals, abundant at alkaline hydrothermal systems, can promote peptide bond formation for surface-bound alanine under cycles of wetting and drying. While we find low level activity in brucite and binary layered double hydroxide carbonate minerals (typically <0.1% yield), the inclusion of structural copper to form a ternary layered double hydroxide mineral significantly increased the yield to >7%. However, the performance decreased over successive wetting/drying cycles. Control experiments show that this high degree of dipeptide formation cannot be attributed to leached copper from the mineral structure. While only dipeptides are observed, the yields obtained suggest that such processes, if occurring on the early Earth, could have added to the pool of available biological building units.

中文翻译：

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分层矿物质表面上的肽形成：水镁石样矿物质对丙氨酸二肽增强形成的关键作用

碱性热液喷口环境作为非生物合成一系列有机分子的潜在场所而受到了广泛的关注。但是，肽形成的关键过程通常是在较低的pH值下进行的，并使用溶解的铜离子来提高选择性和反应性。在这里，我们探索在湿热和干燥的循环下，在碱性热液系统中丰富的分层沉淀矿物是否可以促进表面结合的丙氨酸的肽键形成。虽然我们发现水镁石和二元层状双氢氧化物碳酸盐矿物的活度较低（通常<0.1％的收率），但包含结构铜以形成三元层状双氢氧化物的矿物显着提高了收率至> 7％。然而，性能在连续的润湿/干燥循环中下降。对照实验表明，这种高度的二肽形成不能归因于从矿物结构中浸出的铜。虽然仅观察到二肽，但获得的产量表明，如果这种过程发生在地球早期，则可能会增加可用的生物构建单元库。