I am declaring a new field: Fullerene astrobiology

Fullerenes are abundant in space, e.g. comets, meteorides, nebulae, and interstellar dust. Fullerenes may play a part in the origin of life's polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon world hypothesis (PAH world hypothesis). The PAH world hypothesis is the prelude of the RNA world hypothesis. In this sense, fullerene astrobiology is the field for the study of the contribution of fullerenes in the synthesis of the building blocks of life.

This artist's animation illustrates vibrating buckyballs -- spherical molecules of carbon discovered in space for the first time by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. These molecules jiggle, shimmy and shake in a variety of ways -- 174 to be exact. Four of these vibrational modes cause the molecules to either absorb or generate infrared light. Thanks to these jiggles, Spitzer's infrared vision was able to detect the long-sought signatures of buckyballs in space.
Image and caption credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech, under a public domain. Retrieved from <https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/multimedia/pia13290.html>.

Cage-shaped carbon allotropes are known as fullerenes. In fullerene layers, carbon atoms can be organised in pentagonal, hexagonal, or heptagonal rings. Robert Curl, Harold Kroto, and Richard Smalley discovered fullerenes in 1985 at the University of Sussex and Rice University. Unsubstituted fullerenes have their carbon atoms sp2-hybridized, resulting in a spherical conjugated unsaturated system. Under normal conditions, graphite, which is made up of a stack of loosely linked graphene sheets and flat atomic honeycomb lattices, is the most thermodynamically stable state of carbon. C₂₀ and other small carbon atoms, on the other hand, have a substantial curvature that makes the sp₂ hybrid state difficult to achieve. Heterofullerenes are made by swapping carbon atoms in the lattice. C₇₀ has unique physical and chemical features. C₇₀, which has a long ellipsoidal shape, has similar physical and chemical properties to C₆₀.

Although fullerenes are not PAHs, they can contribute to PAH degradation yields. The first progenitor of life on Earth is fullerenes. They are also PAH degradation products or PAH-degraded organic compounds, and so fit within the PAH world hypothesis, which is a precursor of RNA world hypothesis. Because fullerene cages may protect trapped molecules from UV degradation, they could be employed as natural capsules for the synthesis of organic compounds.

Due to the capacity to vary the number of fullerene-containing catalysts and reaction temperatures, fullerene structures are desirable catalysts in various conversions. Fullerenes are good catalysts for H-transfer processes like hydrogeneration and hydrodealkylation. They are good at converting methane to other hydrocarbons.

When fullerenes are exposed to gamma radiation, they form a conduit for many astrochemical processes. These reactions could lead to the creation of amino acids, which should be able to withstand high doses of gamma radiation. Methane's C-H bond is activated by fullerene, which accelerates methane's conversion to higher hydrocarbons. As catalysts, fullerenes play a role in the creation of PAHs in the interstellar medium.

Ethane, ammonia, formaldehyde, hydrogen cyanide, acetylene, and water can all be trapped by fullerenes. They contain catalytic activity for converting CH₄ to H₂. Methane's C-H bond is activated by fullerene, which accelerates methane's conversion to higher hydrocarbons. With the presence of C₆₀⁺², acetylene can produce cyclic cyanide.

Fullerenes, which have an active electron sea on their surface and can trap atoms, may have played a role in the origin of life. Adenine and other nucleotides, nucleotide chains, and ribosomes could form on fullerene cage surfaces. Life on Earth began when these molecules broke down and combined with other molecules to form amino acids, the building blocks of living tissues. Methane, ammonia, and carbon dioxide made up the original Earth's atmosphere, which had a reducing character in contrast to its current oxidising state. As established in the Miller-Urey experiment, complex combinations of amino acids and other biologically necessary compounds might be created in such an environment. Using first-principles approaches, we investigate the catalytic characteristics of fullerenes under such conditions.

In this sense, fullerene astrobiology is the field for the study of the contribution of fullerenes in the synthesis of the building blocks of life.

References

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Further reading

1. E. Gezer, D. Erbahar. Fullerenes In The Origin Of Life. Poster presented at: GTU 6th Symposium for Graduate Research 2022, 2022. [RG]
2. E. Gezer, D. Erbahar. Catalytic properties of fullerenes in origin of life. Poster presented at: Molecular Origins of Life, Munich 2022, 2022. [RG]