Abundance of RNA in Space Could Offer Fresh Clues about Start of Life: Research
Scientists have been puzzled if the molecular building blocks of life developed here on the planet or whether space objects, such as meteorites and comets, brought them. A research team conducted a scientific experiment where they found that an artificial comet ice contained ribose and other factors that are necessary to start life on a planetary body. Ribose and some other sugars are known as blocks for RNA and DNA. The experiment has suggested that such structured sugars could be reason behind the formation of the solar system.
It was the first time when the compound was detected in comet ice, said researchers from the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis in France. Sugar molecules detected in lab-grown comet are entirely unexpected, announced Cornelia Meinert, an astrochemist and author of a study on the findings.
“This is relevant for many theories on the origin of life”, she wrote in an email. Earthlings have genetic materials in the form of nucleic acids DNA and RNA. Scientists have been working of know what actually causes them. Some believe comets or asteroids gave building blocks to earth to start life.
For the new experiment to create an artificial comet, the team of French chemists used water, ammonia and methanol. A mix of all of these was placed at low temperatures and pressures. It was created to simulate a comet’s materials, as per the team. After that, the material was irradiated with ultraviolet light. At the end, the team found sugars and ribose.
In a report published by the CS Monitor, “The origin of life on Earth has been a matter of intense debate throughout human history. Even today, scientists don’t know whether the molecular building blocks of life were created on Earth or whether they were brought here by comets and meteorites. This is obviously hugely important – if they were delivered to Earth then it seems plausible that they may have been transported to other planets, too.”
The molecular building blocks of life are organic compounds that can be assembled into proteins, RNA and DNA in living cells. To date, scientists have found most of these compounds in meteorites, comets, and interstellar dust. But the sugar ribose, which forms the backbone of RNA, has never been detected in this context. Now experimental results, published in the journal Science, suggest that even ribose can form in comets – strengthening the idea that comets kick-started life on Earth.
“The experiment was a model of how those building blocks could have formed in the early solar system, which was swirling with grains of ice and dust and awash in radiation. Eventually, that ribose-infused ice-dust may have coalesced into comets that then crash-landed on Earth, enriching the primordial soup that would eventually give rise to living things,” according to a news report published by WashingtonPost.
“If you think of all these little molecules we’re making as Lego blocks, and life as a kind of very complex, organized Lego castle,” Sandford told the New Scientist, “the fact that Lego blocks are falling out of the sky can’t be a bad thing.”
According to a report in TechTimes by Katrina Pascual, “Scientific experiments are full of surprises. Just recently, researchers have shown that lab-grown comet ice contains ribose and other sugars, which are believed to be building blocks for RNA and DNA and molecules integral to all known forms of life.”
The experiment opened up the possibility of ribose and similarly structured sugars being assembled under cosmic ice conditions during the formation of the solar system. The compound, according to scientists at the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis in France, had not been previously detected in cometary ice or meteorites.
