Hemolithin is the name given to a protein molecule isolated from two
CV3 meteorites, Allende and Acfer-086. Its deuterium to hydrogen ratio is 26 times terrestrial which is consistent with it having formed in an
interstellar molecular cloud, or later in the
protoplanetary disk at the start of the
Solar System 4.567 billion years ago. The elements hydrogen, lithium,
carbon, oxygen,
nitrogen and iron that it is composed of, were all available for the first time 13 billion years ago after the first generation of
massive stars ended in
nucleosynthetic events. The research leading to the discovery of Hemolithin started in 2007 when
another protein, one of the first to form on Earth, was observed to entrap water. That property being useful to chemistry before biochemistry on earth developed, theoretical
enthalpy calculations on the condensation of
amino acids were performed in gas phase space asking: "whether amino acids could polymerize to protein in space?" - they could, and their water of condensation aided their polymerization. This led to several manuscripts of isotope and mass information on Hemolithin. A comment from the Harvard research leader on Hemolithin/Hemoglycin JEMMc – Hemolithin is now termed hemoglycin. Hemoglycin, a space polymer of glycine and iron has been extensively characterized [1-11] and it does contain lithium in some samples [5]. The research and now needs to be considered in the context of 4 areas of astronomy and planetary science: 1st in astronomy, the period between Pop III and Pop II stars, when the constituent elements of hemoglycin first formed even as early as 500My into cosmic time [1]. 2nd in molecular clouds and protoplanetary disks where the polymer is likely to form and function in accretion [6,9,10]. Thus, the polymer could be a major player in solar system formation throughout the Universe. 3rd after in-fall to planets like Earth, where on Earth it could have kick-started "The Great Oxygenation Event" (GOE) [9]. 4th on exo-planets that evolve biochemistry like Earth, it could be asked whether the formation of DNA involves hemoglycin as a template. Guanine and cytosine nucleotide bases could form and bind to the 5 nm glycine rods of in-fall hemoglycin to start the coding of glycine [12]. Hemoglycin is not a biological molecule, being outside of biochemistry, that is, abiotic. It may have first formed 500 million years into cosmic time as a structure that could absorb photons from 0.2-15 μm [7,8,9,10], be available throughout the Universe, and provide energy to drive adjacent space chemistry. On its in-fall to exo-planets like Earth it could absorb solar ultraviolet and donate energy to early chemical systems. Hemoglycin could therefore be thought of as an abiotic absorber of light, a supplier of energy and an accretor of matter. Synthetic hemoglycin synthesis will be attempted in 2025 to aid acquisition of a refined x-ray diffraction set for its structure. Hemoglycin crystals from meteorites, and stromatolites, to date are fiber-like or multiple [6,8,9]. A comparison of the MALDI mass spectrometry fragmentation patterns [5,11] of synthetic and extracted hemoglycin will be informative. • McGeoch J. E. M. and McGeoch M. W. (2014) Polymer Amide as an Early Topology. PLoS ONE 9(7): e103036. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0103036 • McGeoch J. E. M. and McGeoch M. W. (2015) Polymer amide in the Allende and Murchison meteorites. Meteoritics & Planetary Science 50, Nr12 1971-1983. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/maps.12558 • McGeoch J. E. M. and McGeoch M. W. (2017) A 4641Da polymer of amino acids in Acfer-086 and Allende meteorites. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1707.09080.pdf • McGeoch M. W., Šamoril T., Zapotok D. and McGeoch J. E. M. (2018) Polymer amide as a carrier of 15N in Allende and Acfer 086 meteorites. https://arxiv.org/abs/1811.06578. • McGeoch M. W., Dikler S. and McGeoch J. E. M. (2021) Meteoritic Proteins with Glycine, Iron and Lithium https://arxiv.org/abs/2102.10700. [physics.chem-ph] • McGeoch J. E. M. and McGeoch M.W. (2021) Structural Organization of Space Polymers. Physics of Fluids 33, 6, June 29. https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0054860. • McGeoch J. E. M. and McGeoch M. W. (2022) Chiral 480 nm absorption in the hemoglycin space polymer: a possible link to replication. Sci. Rept. 12 16198 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-21043-4 License CC BY 4.0 • McGeoch M. W., Owen R., Jaho S. and McGeoch J. E. M. (2023) Hemoglycin visible fluorescence induced by X-rays. J. Chem. Phys. 158, 114901 (2023); https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0143945 • McGeoch J. E. M., Frommelt A. J., Owen R., Cinque G., McClelland A., Lageson D. and McGeoch M. W. (2024) Fossil and present-day stromatolite ooids contain a meteoritic polymer of glycine and iron. Int. J. Astrobiology 23, e20, 1-21 https://doi.org/10.1017/S1473550424000168 & arXiv:2309.17195 [physics.geo-ph]. • McGeoch J. E. M. and McGeoch M. W. (2024) Polymer amide as a source of the cosmic 6.2 micron emission and absorption arXiv:2309.14914 [astro-ph.GA]. Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc. 530, 1163-1170. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stae756. • McGeoch J. E. M and McGeoch M. W. (2024) Sea foam contains hemoglycin from cosmic dust. RSC Advances, 2024, 14, 36919 – 36929. https://doi.org/10.1039/d4ra06881e • Lei L. and Burton Z. F. (2021) Evolution of the genetic code, Transcription, 12:1, 28-53, DOI: 10.1080/21541264.2021.1927652 ==See also==