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  1. Article

    Racemization of Valine by Impact-Induced Heating

    Homochirality plays an important role in all living organisms but its origin remains unclear. It also remains unclear whether such chiral molecules survived terrestrial heavy impact events. Impacts of extrater...

    Yoshihiro Furukawa, Atsushi Takase in Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres (2018)

  2. Article

    Effects of Glycine, Water, Ammonia, and Ammonium Bicarbonate on the Oligomerization of Methionine

    The abiotic oligomerization of amino acids may have created primordial, protein-like biological catalysts on the early Earth. Previous studies have proposed and evaluated the potential of diagenesis for the am...

    Rui Huang, Yoshihiro Furukawa, Tsubasa Otake in Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres (2017)

  3. Article

    Effects of Silicate, Phosphate, and Calcium on the Stability of Aldopentoses

    Ribose is an important constituent of RNA: ribose connects RNA bases and forms a strand of sugar phosphates. Accumulation of ribose on prebiotic Earth was difficult because of its low stability. Improvement in...

    Sakiko Nitta, Yoshihiro Furukawa in Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres (2016)

  4. Article

    Selective Stabilization of Ribose by Borate

    In this study, borate was found to selectively increase the stability of ribose over other aldopentoses. Ribose is the only sugar present in both early RNA-based biochemistry and contemporary DNA-based life, a...

    Yoshihiro Furukawa, Mana Horiuchi in Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres (2013)

  5. Article

    Abiotic Formation of Valine Peptides Under Conditions of High Temperature and High Pressure

    We investigated the oligomerization of solid valine and the stabilities of valine and valine peptides under conditions of high temperature (150–200 °C) and high pressure (50–150 MPa). Experiments were performe...

    Yoshihiro Furukawa, Tsubasa Otake in Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres (2012)