Question

Glycine and Alanine are different with respect to one substituent on the α -carbon. What are the other common substituent groups?
​

Answer 1

Explanation:

In recent years many scientists have independently proven that minerals promote polymerization of amino acids into protein-like structures, support development of lipidic layers and stimulate and serve as scaffolds for the self assembly of RNA nucleotide(Lambert 2008; Hazen 2006). Among all of the minerals known to mankind, quartz seems to be one of the most probable to participate in prebiotic chemistry. Apart from being the most common mineral on Earth, many distinctive features, such as homochirality, piezoelectricity and the ability to form free radicals under mechanical activation seem to support its plausible role in the formation of life (Damm and Peukert 2009).

As a stable mineral, quartz does not possess a high potential to initialise, alter or steer any chemical process. In order to do so, some source of external energy is needed (Pross 2004). A highly probable source of such energy seems to be electric discharge. In the small water pond, filled with quartz crystals and amino acids, such an occurrence could cause reverse piezoelectric effects in the crystal, hydrolysis of water and ozone generation (Sahni and Locke 2006; Ueda et al. 2009). These factors could influence molecular structure and/or constitution of organic compounds.