Infrared spectral investigations of UV irradiated nucleobases adsorbed on mineral surfaces

The interaction between electromagnetic radiation and bio-molecules in heterogeneous environments is a prebiotically relevant process. Minerals may have a pivotal role in the prebiotic evolution of complex chemical systems, mediating the effects of electromagnetic radiation, influencing the photostability of bio-molecules, catalyzing important chemical reactions and/or protecting molecules against degradation. In particular, nucleobases are relevant bio-molecules to investigate both in the prebiotic context, because they are coding components of nucleic acids, and from the standpoint of the survival of biological systems in space conditions. Several studies on the photodynamics of nucleobases suggest that their structure could have been naturally selected for the ability to dissipate electronic energy through ultrafast photophysical decay. Considering the putative involvement of minerals in the prebiotic chemistry, it is necessary to study the photostability of nucleobases under space conditions in the presence of mineral matrices, to investigate both the prebiotic processes that might have had a role in the development of the first living entities on Earth and the physical and chemical processes occurring in extraterrestrial environments. We focused our study on the characterization of the nature of the interaction between nucleobases and the surface of the minerals magnesium oxide and forsterite by infrared vibrational spectroscopy. We observed that most of the characteristic bands of pure nucleobases vanished when adsorbed on magnesium oxide. On the contrary, in the case of adenine and uracil adsorbed on forsterite, very intense nucleobase absorption peaks appeared. This phenomenon pertains to the surface selection rules changes related to molecular orientation. Moreover, based on the vibrational shifts, we deduced the molecular interaction sites with the mineral surfaces. Furthermore, we investigated the photostability of nucleobases adsorbed on such minerals through in situ UV irradiation experiments. Experimental results confirm the high intrinsic photostability of such molecules, because a rather low probability of interaction between UV radiation and nucleobases was estimated, and furthermore indicate that cytosine and hypoxanthine have a greater photostability compared to adenine and uracil, both pure and adsorbed onto magnesium oxide and forsterite.