2022 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report

Isotopologues as universal tracers of abiotic processes

Research Project

Project/Area Number	21K18646
Research Institution	Tokyo Institute of Technology
Principal Investigator	ジルベルトアレキシー東京工業大学, 理学院, 准教授 (20726955)
Project Period (FY)	2021-07-09 – 2023-03-31
Keywords	Abiotic / Biotic / Isotopologue / 13C-13C
Outline of Annual Research Achievements	We used the developed method (Taguchi et al. 2020, 2021) to analyze ethane samples from diverse origins. In particular, we conducted simulation experiments involving methane abiotic polymerization with diverse energy sources (UV, spark discharge, gamma irradiation). When the results of the simulations are compared with natural gas from putative abiotic sources, the abundance of 13C-13C isotopologue is relatively low in both cases. On the other hand, samples from biotic origin (cracking of organic matter, biological ethanol) show high abundance of the 13C-13C istopologue and are consistent with natural gas samples. Overall, these data prove that the 13C-13C isotopologue can be a new tracer of abiotic processes, and as such the results have been published in Nature Communications.

(3 results)