Analyses of Aliphatic Aldehydes and Ketones in Carbonaceous Chondrites

Aliphatic aldehydes and ketones are essential building blocks for the synthesis of more complex organic compounds. Despite their potentially key role as precursors of astrobiologically important molecules, such as amino acids and carboxylic acids, this family of compounds has scarcely been evaluated in carbonaceous chondrites. The paucity of such analyses likely derives from the low concentration of aldehydes and ketones in the meteorites and from the currently used chromatographic methodologies that have not been optimized for meteorite analysis. In this work, we report the development of a novel analytical method to quantify the molecular distribution and compound-specific isotopic analysis of 29 aliphatic aldehydes and ketones. Using this method, we have investigated the molecular distribution and ¹³C-isotopic composition of aldehydes and ketones in 10 carbonaceous chondrites from the CI, CM, CR, and CV groups. The total concentration of carbonyl compounds ranged from 130 to 1000 nmol g^-1 of meteorite with formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, and acetone being the most abundant species in all investigated samples. The ¹³C-isotopic values ranged from -67 to +64‰ and we did not observe clear relationships between ¹³C-content and molecular weight. Accurately measuring the relative abundances, determining the molecular distribution, and isotopic composition of chondritic organic compounds is central in assessing both their formation chemistry and synthetic relationships.