There, as well as on the moon, Fischer-Tropsch reactions appear to not only convert fumarolic hydrogen, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide into hydrocarbons but also create lipids. Lipid micelles, acting as reaction chambers, would prevent dilution and enhance concentration of pre-biotic lunar compounds. Most of these fluids in lunar shadow (40 K) would freeze and if this website over a centimeter thick most would persist over geologically long time periods because of their low vapor pressures.
Hadean and later fumarolic fluids are believed to include ammonia, ammonium cyanide, carbon disulfide, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, carbonyl sulfide, chlorine, cyanogen, hydrogen sulfide, methane, nitrogen, sulfur, sulfur monochloride and water. According to O’Hara (2000) water would be required in the differentiation of the lunar highlands. Also the Apollo 17 colored volcanic spherules Mocetinostat nmr returned from the moon have oxygen fugacities as high as terrestrial volcanic glasses
(10−9 Po2) suggesting that lunar vent magmas were not as “dry” as the oft-quoted 10−13 Po2 figures suggest. Fumarolic compounds contain relatively high concentrations of both tungsten and soluble polyphosphates; the former acting as a critical metalloenzyme and the latter creating oligomeric amino acids leading by multiple steps to adenosine triphosphate and pre-RNA molecules. It has long
been recognized that electrical energy from flow charging in volcanic vents and charge separation on freezing can both create many organic compounds including amino acids, formaldehyde and glycolaldehyde under reducing conditions. Amino acids and its products (with cyanide) can assemble into initially racemic proteins as membrane components. YH25448 in vivo Ribose can also be formed and possibly stabilized by boron in fumarolic fluids. D-ribose, purines and polyphosphates may have led to pre-RNA replicating polymers to RNA to DNA possibly involving a bridging medium of methyl-RNA (Poole, et al, 2000). Montmorillonite and kaolinite as hydrothermal Rolziracetam clays in fumaroles have been suggested as metabolic platforms for protolife including polymerization of peptides and oligonucleotides (Fishkit, 2007). Another positively charged biofilm platform is pyrite. The conversion of troilite—the most common lunar sulfide—with hydrogen can produce pyrite with a thermodynamically viable negative free energy of −41.9 kJ/mol (Wächterhauser, 1988). Other simple combinations of troilite, hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide with negative free energies can produce methylthiols as well as a colloidal pyritic biofilm to which organic molecules could attach and receive energy. There are many stimuli for the origin of protolife in all types of Hadean and later fumaroles.