{"id":42579,"date":"2026-09-24T18:04:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T16:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/?p=42579"},"modified":"2026-09-24T18:04:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T16:04:13","slug":"nitrogen-and-intramolecular-carbon-isotopic-measurements-of-%ce%b2-alanine-in-samples-from-asteroid-bennu-and-the-murchison-meteorite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/?p=42579","title":{"rendered":"Nitrogen and intramolecular carbon isotopic measurements of \u03b2-alanine in samples from asteroid Bennu and the Murchison meteorite<span class=\"badge-status\" style=\"background:#787878\">OPEN ACCESS<\/span>&nbsp;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Oph\u00e9lie M. Mcintosh, Allison A. Baczynski, Cornelia Rasmussen, David W. Hoffman, Daniel P. Glavin, Jason P. Dworkin, Jamie E. Elsila, Christopher H. House, Katherine H. Freeman, Harold C. Connolly Jr &amp; Dante S. Lauretta<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Communications Earth &amp; Environment, Published: 24 September 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s43247-026-04084-9\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>LINK (OPEN ACCESS)<\/strong><\/a><br><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s43247-026-04084-9_reference.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>PDF (OPEN ACCESS)<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"justify-text\">&#8220;Amino acids are central to prebiotic chemistry, and their abundances and isotopic compositions provide critical constraints on the synthetic mechanisms and environments in which they formed. Samples delivered to Earth from the carbonaceous asteroid (101955) Bennu by NASA\u2019s OSIRIS-REx mission offer an opportunity to investigate amino acids preserved in pristine material unaffected by terrestrial contamination. Here, we report \u03b415N and \u03b413C intramolecular isotopic measurements for \u03b2-alaninein a homogenized regolith from Bennu (\u03b413COOH\u2009=\u2009363\u2009\u00b1\u200929\u2030; \u03b413C\u03b1\u2009+\u2009\u03b2\u2009=\u2009\u2212163\u2009\u00b1\u200913\u2030; \u03b415N\u2009=\u2009170\u2009\u00b1\u20094\u2030) and the Murchison meteorite (\u03b413COOH\u2009=\u2009111\u2009\u00b1\u200922\u2030; \u03b413C\u03b1\u2009+\u2009\u03b2\u2009=\u2009\u221244\u2009\u00b1\u200910\u2030; \u03b415N\u2009=\u200963\u2009\u00b1\u20094\u2030). Large intramolecular isotopic differences between the COOH and the position-averaged C\u03b1\u2009+\u2009\u03b2 carbons were measured in both samples (\u0394= 526\u2009\u00b1\u200932\u2030 and 155\u2009\u00b1\u200924\u2030, respectively). The samples display similar intramolecular isotope distributions, consistent with a common synthetic route, but differ markedly in their position-specific carbon and nitrogen isotope compositions (\u0394\u03b413COOH\u2009=\u2009252\u2009\u00b1\u200936\u2030, \u0394\u03b413C\u03b1\u2009+\u2009\u03b2\u2009=\u2009119\u2009\u00b1\u200916\u2030, \u0394\u03b415N\u2009=\u2009107\u2009\u00b1\u20096\u2030). These differences are difficult to reconcile with recognized parent-body processes and suggest that nitrogen and intramolecular carbon isotopic measurements could provide direct geochemical evidence for spatial heterogeneity in organic synthesis across the protoplanetary disk and new constraints on the chemical environments and precursor reservoirs that gave rise to extraterrestrial amino acids.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Oph\u00e9lie M. Mcintosh, Allison A. Baczynski, Cornelia Rasmussen, David W. Hoffman, Daniel P. Glavin, Jason P. Dworkin, Jamie E. Elsila, Christopher H. House, Katherine H. Freeman, Harold C. Connolly Jr &amp; Dante S. Lauretta Communications&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[152,9,18,576,552],"tags":[5719,1350,542,1865,250,3273,105,107,2346,4683,4205],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42579"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42579"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42580,"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42579\/revisions\/42580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}