{"id":42607,"date":"2026-10-05T13:06:37","date_gmt":"2026-10-05T11:06:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/?p=42607"},"modified":"2026-10-05T13:06:39","modified_gmt":"2026-10-05T11:06:39","slug":"chiral-discrimination-of-amino-acids-in-meteorite-and-desert-soil-extracts-via-single-molecule-nanogap-conductance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/?p=42607","title":{"rendered":"Chiral discrimination of amino acids in meteorite and desert soil extracts via single-molecule nanogap conductance<span class=\"badge-status\" style=\"background:#787878\">OPEN ACCESS<\/span>&nbsp;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Takahito Ohshiro, Yuki Komoto, Takayuki Takaai, Takeshi Yoshida, Takashi Washio, Jos\u00e9 L. Ram\u00edrez-Col\u00f3n, Hannah L. Mclain, Daniel Duzdevich, Maria T. Zuber, Christopher E. Carr &amp; Masateru Taniguchi<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nature Communications, Volume 17, Article number: 10274<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41467-026-77947-6\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>LINK (OPEN ACCESS)<\/strong><\/a><br><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41467-026-77947-6.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>PDF (OPEN ACCESS)<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"justify-text\">&#8220;Life on Earth uses L-amino acids and D-sugars, whereas abiotic processes produce equal abundances of both enantiomers. Detecting enantiomeric excess among molecules of biological interest has therefore been proposed as a potential biosignature for life beyond Earth. However, robust electrical methods for determining the L\/D ratios of amino acids and sugars at low concentrations, particularly in chemically complex samples, remain limited. Here we show that quantum tunneling currents electrically distinguish individual L- and D-amino acids and quantify their ratios at the single-molecule level without optical measurements or chiral recognition molecules. Individual enantiomers are distinguished with over 80% accuracy, and a blind test of 39 amino acids identifies both molecular identity and chirality with &gt;50% accuracy, well above random chance. Mixtures containing four amino acids with different chiral compositions are quantified with &gt;66% accuracy. Murchison meteorite and Atacama Desert extracts are analyzed using a targeted panel of 11 amino acids. Confidence-based filtering distinguishes high-confidence target assignments from low-confidence events, and the resulting compositions capture major compositional features observed by LC\u2013MS while highlighting the effects of background and low-abundance signals. These results establish a targeted single-molecule electrical approach for chiral amino acid analysis and provide a foundation for future applications to study chemically complex samples, including those relevant to astrobiological research.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Takahito Ohshiro, Yuki Komoto, Takayuki Takaai, Takeshi Yoshida, Takashi Washio, Jos\u00e9 L. Ram\u00edrez-Col\u00f3n, Hannah L. Mclain, Daniel Duzdevich, Maria T. Zuber, Christopher E. Carr &amp; Masateru Taniguchi Nature Communications, Volume 17, Article number: 10274 LINK&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[152,1598,9,18,576],"tags":[1865,3631,2522,3273,5549,105,7312,2719,3109,1135,107],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42607"}],"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=42607"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42608,"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42607\/revisions\/42608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}