The stability of amino acids at submarine hydrothermal vent temperatures.

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.