Abiotic synthesis of some polysaccharide-like and polypeptide-like structures in cold plasma.

Starting from methane, ammonia and water vapors polypeptide-like and polysaccharide-like structures have been synthesized in cold plasma conditions. By gel filtration analysis of the raw product eight fractions of different molecular weight have been separated. The partial chemical nature of each fraction and of the hydrolysis products has been determined using elementary analysis, IR spectroscopy, paper, thin-layer and gas-chromatography. It is noteworthy that higher proportions of H2O in the feed composition increase the amount of sugar and polysaccharide-like compounds in the reaction product.