In the Origins and Habitability Lab at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, you can find a world in a test tube – specifically, a simplified simulation of early Earth.
In the Origins and Habitability Lab at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, you can find a world in a test tube – specifically, a simplified simulation of early Earth.
![A) Alanine synthesis using a Strecker mechanism, where the wiggly bonds indicate indeterminate stereochemistry. (B) Illustrating a calcium-promoted step on the reaction pathway where a PNC effect from Ca2+ could influence chiral preference at the Cα carbon (highlighted by circling in dashed blue). (C) An example of an Ala-bound calcium complex in a metal-mediated autocatalytic pathway, where L and L′ could be water, a bifurcating carboxylate from another amino acid [5], or other ligands. -- Life](https://astrobiology.newspackstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Influence-of-the.png)
