Amino acid dating range
Racemization is the process in which one enantiomer of a compound, such as an L-amino acid, converts to the other enantiomer. An older convention, commonly used by biochemists to describe amino acids and sugars, uses the letters D and L to designate absolute configuration Figure 1. In a laboratory setting, scientists are able to measure the degree of racemization using polarimetry, liquid chromatography, capillary electrophoresis, and mass spectrometry.
drawing illustrating the process of determining the date of a log sample by Aspartic acid (one of the 20 amino acids) is usually extracted from samples for this.
Brown Geoscience Research Institute. Due to the strong dependency of racemization rates on temperature, water concentration, and alkalinity, uncertainties regarding conditions of preservation can leave amino-acid-based age relationships among even similar fossils open to question. The survival of amino acids in fossils from the Paleozoic era and the trend for the apparent racemization rate constant to decrease with conventional fossil age assignment raise a serious question concerning the accuracy with which radioisotope age data have been used to represent the real-time history of fossils.
The instability of the twenty amino acids which are the building blocks of proteins provides a possible means for determining the ages of fossils. A preliminary recognition of this possibility appeared in the scientific literature 30 years ago Abelson Since amino acids have widely varying degrees of stability, after the death of an organism the less stable amino acid components will decompose more rapidly than those which are more stable, producing an amino acid signature that is increasingly distributed toward the more stable components as time progresses Hare and Abelson , Lee et al.
Do you want to find a sex partner? It is very easy. Click here, registration is free!Because of the range of variation among individual members of the same species Hare and Abelson , Hare and Mitterer , King and Hare , Jope , amino acids may be expected to provide at best only a broad indication of fossil age. Uncertainty as to the extent to which modern organisms represent in detail the characteristics of their ancient counterparts introduces additional lack of precision in a fossil age based on amino acid ratios.