Bada J L, Miller S L, Zhao M
Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla 92093, USA.
Orig Life Evol Biosph. 1995 Jun;25(1-3):111-8. doi: 10.1007/BF01581577.
It has been postulated that amino acid stability at hydrothermal vent temperatures is controlled by a metastable thermodynamic equilibrium rather than by kinetics. Experiments reported here demonstrate that the amino acids are irreversibly destroyed by heating at 240 degrees C and that quasi-equilibrium calculations give misleading descriptions of the experimental observations. Equilibrium thermodynamic calculations are not applicable to organic compounds under high-temperature submarine vent conditions.
