Amino Acid Racemization Measurements In Water Column of Ice Covered Antarctic Lakes (East And West Bonney Lakes)
Abstract
The exploration of subglacial lakes has caught the imagination of the scientific and general public. The high level of interest has been generated by speculation about the possibility of life in such lakes being isolated for a long time and its potential analogy to other ice covered world's in the solar system, such as Jupiter?s moon Europa. We have studied the dependence of the level of aspartate racemization on depth in East and West Bonney lakes (Antarctica). The level of amino acid racemization can provide insights on the age and biological activity in water column. Studied Antarctic lakes are meromictic and probably have not been completely mixed for a long time. Our data showed that the dependence of D/L for aspartic acid for East and West Bonney lakes on depth are very different, even though these lakes are connected. In the West Bonney Lake D/L has a distinct maximum at depth 20 m, when in East Bonney lake D/L monotonically goes up with depth.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2002
- Bibcode:
- 2002AGUFM.C11A0979P
- Keywords:
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- 1055 Organic geochemistry