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Microbial metabolism of TholinTholin, a class of complex organic heteropolymers hypothesized to possess wide solar system distribution, is shown to furnish the carbon and energy requirements of a wide variety of common soil bacteria which encompasses aerobic, anaerobic, and facultatively anaerobic bacteria. Some of these bacteria are able to derive not merely their carbon but also their nitrogen requirements from tholin. The palatability of tholins to modern microbes is speculated to have implications for the early evolution of microbial life on earth; tholins may have formed the base of the food chain for an early heterotrophic biosphere, prior to the evolution of autotrophy on the early earth.
Document ID
19900047960
Acquisition Source
Legacy CDMS
Document Type
Reprint (Version printed in journal)
Authors
Stoker, C. R.
(NASA Ames Research Center Moffett Field, CA, United States)
Mancinelli, R. L.
(NASA Ames Research Center Moffett Field, CA, United States)
Boston, P. J.
(NCAR Boulder, CO, United States)
Segal, W.
(Colorado, University Boulder, United States)
Khare, B. N.
(Cornell University Ithaca, NY, United States)
Date Acquired
August 14, 2013
Publication Date
May 1, 1990
Publication Information
Publication: Icarus
Volume: 85
ISSN: 0019-1035
Subject Category
Life Sciences (General)
Accession Number
90A35015
Funding Number(s)
CONTRACT_GRANT: NGR-33-010-101
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other

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