SEEDING THE PREGENETIC EARTH: METEORITIC ABUNDANCES OF NUCLEOBASES AND POTENTIAL REACTION PATHWAYS
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Carbonaceous chondrites are a class of meteorite known for having high contents of water and organics. In this study, the abundances of the nucleobases, i.e., the building blocks of RNA and DNA, found in carbonaceous chondrites are collated from a variety of published data and compared across various meteorite classes. An extensive review of abiotic chemical reactions producing nucleobases is then performed. These reactions are then reduced to a list of 15 individual reaction pathways that could potentially occur within meteorite parent bodies. The nucleobases guanine, adenine, and uracil are found in carbonaceous chondrites in amounts of 1–500 ppb. It is currently unknown which reaction is responsible for their synthesis within the meteorite parent bodies. One class of carbonaceous meteorite dominates the abundances of both amino acids and nucleobases—the so-called CM2 (e.g., Murchison meteorite). CR2 meteorites (e.g., Graves Nunataks) also dominate the abundances of amino acids, but are the least abundant in nucleobases. The abundances of total nucleobases in these two classes are 330 ± 250 and 16 ± 13 ppb, respectively. Guanine most often has the greatest abundances in carbonaceous chondrites with respect to the other nucleobases, but is 1–2 orders of magnitude less abundant in CM2 meteorites than glycine (the most abundant amino acid). Our survey of the reaction mechanisms for nucleobase formation suggests that Fischer–Tropsch synthesis (i.e., CO, H 2 , and NH 3 gases reacting in the presence of a catalyst such as alumina or silica) is the most likely candidate for conditions that characterize the early states of planetesimals.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".