CHINA – A team of scientists from a lab in the city of Hefei, in southeastern China’s Anhui province, has managed to create amino acids – the building block of life – using only air and water.
Amino acids, the fundamental components of proteins, play a crucial role in living organisms and the researchers were looking for another way to synthesise glycine – the simplest stable amino acid.
Traditional methods of synthesising glycine have relied heavily on petroleum-derived products such as aldehydes and cyanides. These methods not only consume a significant amount of energy but also produce substantial waste, leading to environmental pollution.
The elements carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen, essential for amino acids, can all be sourced from carbon dioxide, water, nitrogen and oxygen in the air.
In August, the researchers conducted an experiment that showed a new approach to eco-friendly chemical production.
The study also indicated a potential for more complicated molecules, such as proteins, the project’s lead scientist Zeng Jie, from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) explained.
In their study, researchers from USTC and the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China produced an electrochemical catalysis process that began with air, paving the way for an eco-friendly method of synthesising amino acids.
In the Miller-Urey experiment of 1952, scientists at the University of Chicago simulated Earth’s primitive atmosphere by sealing water, methane, ammonia and hydrogen in a container and applying electrical charges to mimic natural lightning.
After one week, they detected several amino acids in their final products, showing a potential origin for living molecules.
The synthesis process consisted of three main parts: CO2 conversion, N2 fixation, and targeted C-N coupling.
First, carbon dioxide was converted into oxalic acid, then reduced to glyoxylic acid; nitrogen gas was synthesised into ammonia and then into hydroxylamine, which spontaneously reacted with the glyoxylic acid through electro-reduction to produce glycine.
Each step involved key catalysts and reaction devices. “The nitrogen fixation step, for instance, employed a lithium-mediated method that utilises the reactivity of metallic lithium to transform inactive nitrogen into lithium nitride, and subsequently into ammonia,” said Zeng.
He added that the method was similar to how lithium batteries work through chemical reactions. After less than a day of steady electrolysis, the research team was able to synthesise about 5.16 grams (0.18 of an ounce) of highly pure solid glycine in the lab using just air and water.
Zeng has also experimented with using carbon dioxide to chemically and biologically synthesise glucose.
“We chose glycine because of its simpler structure among amino acids. Our team might explore the synthesis of more complex amino acids from natural materials in the future,” he said.
“By combining glucose and amino acids, the most basic biological molecules, we have an opportunity to explore the synthesis of more complex biological molecules from scratch, which is of vital importance.”