Abiotic phosphorus recycling from adsorbed ribonucleotides on a ferrihydrite-type mineral: Probing solution and surface species.

Iron (Fe) (oxyhydr)oxide minerals, which are amongst most reactive minerals in soils and sediments, are known to exhibit strong adsorption of inorganic phosphate (P) and organophosphate (P) compounds. Beyond synthetic P compounds, much still remains unknown about the reactivity of these minerals to transform naturally-occurring P compounds to P, particularly with respect to solution versus surface speciation of P hydrolysis. To investigate this reactivity with a ferrihydrite-type mineral and ribonucleotides, we employed high-resolution liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS), X-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES), Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, and molecular modeling.