The beginning of life on Earth had to withstand high levels of radiation from UV light. For biomolecules like glutamic acid, it is believed that lipid bilayers, like DOPC, were to be what protected the biomolecules under such stress of UV degradation. To determine if this would be the case, solutions containing glutamic acid were either encapsulated or in the presence of DOPC, and then either exposed or unexposed to UV light for a one hour time period. For every 15 minute interval during this hour, 50 µL was extracted from each solution, and then analyzed through HPLC. Data showed that there was a slight increase in UV degradation in both of the exposed solutions of the encapsulated DOPC vesicles and unencapsulated glutamic acid. Due to no significant degradation, the future applications plan to use a higher concentration of glutamic acid in the samples in order to increase the peaks under UV-vis, and to expose the molecules for a longer period of time in hopes of having a higher impact of UV degradation.

HPLC analysis of the UV degradation of glutamic acid in DOPC

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