NASA finds proof that amino acid components in meteorites originate in space.
This is exciting news. NASA-funded researchers have evidence that some building blocks of DNA, the molecule that carries the genetic instructions for life, found in meteorites were likely created in space. The research gives support to the theory that a “kit” of ready-made parts created in space and delivered to Earth by meteorite and comet impacts assisted the origin of life. We may all be immigrants on Earth.
By Bill Steigerwald
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
NASA-funded researchers have evidence that some building blocks of DNA, the molecule that carries the genetic instructions for life, found in meteorites were likely created in space. The research gives support to the theory that a “kit” of ready-made parts created in space and delivered to Earth by meteorite and comet impacts assisted the origin of life.
“People have been discovering components of DNA in meteorites since the 1960’s, but researchers were unsure whether they were really created in space or if instead they came from contamination by terrestrial life,” said Dr. Michael Callahan of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. “For the first time, we have three lines of evidence that together give us confidence these DNA building blocks actually were created in space.” Callahan is lead author of a paper on the discovery appearing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
The discovery adds to a growing body of evidence that the chemistry inside asteroids and comets is capable of making building blocks of essential biological molecules.
For example, previously, these scientists at the Goddard Astrobiology Analytical Laboratory have found amino acids in samples of comet Wild 2 from NASA’s Stardust mission, and in various carbon-rich meteorites. Amino acids are used to make proteins, the workhorse molecules of life, used in everything from structures like hair to enzymes, the catalysts that speed up or regulate chemical reactions.
In the new work, the Goddard team ground up samples of twelve carbon-rich meteorites, nine of which were recovered from Antarctica. They extracted each sample with a solution of formic acid and ran them through a liquid chromatograph, an instrument that separates a mixture of compounds. They further analyzed the samples with a mass spectrometer, which helps determine the chemical structure of compounds.
The team found adenine and guanine, which are components of DNA called nucleobases, as well as hypoxanthine and xanthine. DNA resembles a spiral ladder; adenine and guanine connect with two other nucleobases to form the rungs of the ladder. They are part of the code that tells the cellular machinery which proteins to make. Hypoxanthine and xanthine are not found in DNA, but are used in other biological processes.
Also, in two of the meteorites, the team discovered for the first time trace amounts of three molecules related to nucleobases: purine, 2,6-diaminopurine, and 6,8-diaminopurine; the latter two almost never used in biology. These compounds have the same core molecule as nucleobases but with a structure added or removed.
It’s these nucleobase-related molecules, called nucleobase analogs, which provide the first piece of evidence that the compounds in the meteorites came from space and not terrestrial contamination. “You would not expect to see these nucleobase analogs if contamination from terrestrial life was the source, because they’re not used in biology, aside from one report of 2,6-diaminopurine occurring in a virus (cyanophage S-2L),” said Callahan. “However, if asteroids are behaving like chemical ‘factories’ cranking out prebiotic material, you would expect them to produce many variants of nucleobases, not just the biological ones, due to the wide variety of ingredients and conditions in each asteroid.”
The second piece of evidence involved research to further rule out the possibility of terrestrial contamination as a source of these molecules. The team also analyzed an eight-kilogram (17.64-pound) sample of ice from Antarctica, where most of the meteorites in the study were found, with the same methods used on the meteorites. The amounts of the two nucleobases, plus hypoxanthine and xanthine, found in the ice were much lower — parts per trillion — than in the meteorites, where they were generally present at several parts per billion. More significantly, none of the nucleobase analogs were detected in the ice sample. One of the meteorites with nucleobase analog molecules fell in Australia, and the team also analyzed a soil sample collected near the fall site. As with the ice sample, the soil sample had none of the nucleobase analog molecules present in the meteorite.
Thirdly, the team found these nucleobases — both the biological and non-biological ones — were produced in a completely non-biological reaction. “In the lab, an identical suite of nucleobases and nucleobase analogs were generated in non-biological chemical reactions containing hydrogen cyanide, ammonia, and water. This provides a plausible mechanism for their synthesis in the asteroid parent bodies, and supports the notion that they are extraterrestrial,” says Callahan.
“In fact, there seems to be a ‘goldilocks’ class of meteorite, the so-called CM2 meteorites, where conditions are just right to make more of these molecules,” adds Callahan.
The team includes Callahan and Drs. Jennifer C. Stern, Daniel P. Glavin, and Jason P. Dworkin of NASA Goddard’s Astrobiology Analytical Laboratory; Ms. Karen E. Smith and Dr. Christopher H. House of Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pa.; Dr. H. James Cleaves II of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, DC; and Dr. Josef Ruzicka of Thermo Fisher Scientific, Somerset, N.J. The research was funded by the NASA Astrobiology Institute, the Goddard Center for Astrobiology, the NASA Astrobiology: Exobiology and Evolutionary Biology Program, and the NASA Postdoctoral Program.
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So, life started somewhere else in the universe, then travelled a huge distance through a near vacuum and managed to survive a high temperature through the Earth’s atmosphere and survive the crash on the surface, where suitable food was found for that life to breed.
I think it’s much more likely that life started here on Earth. Maybe after millions of years at a deep sea vent.
They found “building blocks” of life on meteorites, ipso facto those building blocks were created there. Are there any grade school students who can tell the class, and these “expert” scientists, what is wrong with that logic? (Now, if we just accept this claptrap, we have not only Mother Earth, but Mother asteroids — congratulations all, pantheism is back.) This is just another example of the crisis of incompetence, particularly in the earth and life sciences, which my research has shown a bright light upon. You can’t afford to believe blindly in the “exciting news” of scientists snuggled in their comfortable paradigm, of undirected evolution of, not just life, but everything; it will stunt your growth. Correction, it has stunted everyone’s growth, ever since Darwin. The fact — fact — is, our solar system has a real history — of deliberate past design(s) — not just a vague, undirected “evolution”, where rocks in space can create the complex building blocks of life.
Scott says:
“Well now, this news gives pause to put “god” back on the scientific menu”
Well Scott, if I read you right, it does the exact opposite, what better “proof” that God sent the origin (building blocks) of life everywhere?
Not that I put too much stock into intelligent design.
NASA finds proof that amino acids in meteorites originate in space.
———
The title is wrong. It should read:
NASA finds proof that nucleobases in meteorites originate in space.
Is there something about the earth’s primordial environment that inhibited the formation of those same compounds?
Accepting the notion that amino acids do indeed form in space, and came to earth in meteroites (and I have no reason to doubt it), that still is not evidence that those same amino acids didn’t also form on earth at the same time. At least after the earth’s crust had cooled enough for delicate chemical compounds to form.
In other words, the alien invader amino acids could have found earth already occupied by native amino acids.
The really controversial subject is about fossil bacteria possibly found in carbonaceous chondrites:
http://aquapour.com/alien-bacteria-fossils-found-in-meteorite-by-nasa-scientist/556290/
You see this would turn everything topsy turvy. A small subset of amino and nucleic acids in exceedingly dilute amounts is one thing. That’s some pretty simple chemistry that just happens when you have the proper chemicals in contact. Miller-Urey did that in a lab 60 years ago. Problem is you can’t make a living thing out of it because the component set of acids is far from complete and the molecules need to be greatly concentrated. No one has yet figured out a credible way for a big enough subset of these molecules to get concentrated in one place so they can bump around into each other and do interesting things,
Someone else on the thread asked about whether the molecules in OP were left or right handed. He was referring to the chirality problem. Life on earth uses only left or right handed molecules. One handedness for amino acids and the other for nucleic. I forget which is left and which is right. The problem is that nature these acids are produced in more or less equal quantities of right and left handed.
Rob Sheldon, a UAH astrophysicist colleague of Roy Spencer’s has an interesting hypothesis that the most simple forms of life like bacteria, phages, and viruses inhabit comets and these of course have rained down upon the earth over the course of deep time. Moreover he postulates that when two stars pass within about 2 light years of each other their outer cometary halos mingle and exchange genetic materials in the process thus life spreads and mingles between stars.
The topsy turvy part is for evolutionary dogma which is based on a biologically closed system (the earth) where there isn’t strange and different genetic material coming from elsewhere in cosmos. The whole thing is based upon life emerging one time in one place and then the first rudimentary genes and proteins they code for undergoing descent with modification. Thereby all extant genes today can be traced back in time one little change at a time to universal common ancestors. If unique and quite different genes that didn’t evolve on this planet in that fashion can just rain down from the sky at any old time in any old place it throws everything we think we know about evolution over deep time right out the window.
Our old friend (and misleadingly the patron saint of Warmists) Svante Arrhenius was an advocate of Panspermia, the hypothesis that life came to Earth in the form of bacterial spores. Of course amino acids and nucleobases are a far cry from such organisms, but it is neat to find an old idea gradually growing in plausibility.
/Mr Lynn
Umm, amino acids are not used in DNA. The story makes things clear, but amino acids have been identified in radio astronomy spectra, comets, and meteorites.
I’m not familiar with nucleobase research by astronomers, there may well be some, it’s not a field I keep up with well. Certainly this study will be a welcome addition.
I used to know a lot more about this than I do now, but basically, creating complex organic molecules from simple precursors doesn’t look to be all that difficult. The Urey-Miller experiment is one example, but there are others as well that create complex molecules in different environments than Urey-Miller. The early Earth (and Moon and Mars and whatever) probably had diverse environments and probably there were diverse organic chemicals present. What’s difficult to deal with is how a (probably dilute) organic soup in the oceans managed to bridge the gap to self replicating systems. The simplest self replicating systems we know of are pretty complex. Moreover there isn’t any obvious path from a bunch of proteins that somehow assemble more of themselves, to even the simplest lifeform.
There is still a lot to be learned.
I have often wondered what planet these extreme climate alarmists come from?
@Kelvin Potter Vaughan
I remember Carl Sagan going through a formula to work out if there was alien life in the universe.
That would be the Drake Equation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation
At the end he said If there was alien life where are they? They should be here now!
The Fermi Paradox:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox
The answer is of course that one or several of his assumption for the variables in the Drake Equation must have been too optimistic. Unfortunately we don’t know which one(s). Or it could be that the Drake Equation as such is faulty, that too is something we don’t know.
“I shouted at the TV “It’s us!” but you know scientists, they don’t listen to us mere mortals.”
Well they do, they came up with that answer long before. And they refuted it themselves. The fact that we are here and are able to reason about the probability of life in the universe proves that life must be possible at all – because otherwhise there would be no-one reasoning about it -, but it says nothing about its occurrence in the rest of the universe. It could be extremely rare, it could even be that we are the only ones reasoning about it. The fact alone that we are able to do so that there must be many other species in the universe doing the same.
See Anthropic Principle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle
I knew that.
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/why-do-i-believe-in-god
The part about the 2,6-diaminopurine occurring in a virus – that was one of the compounds found on the meteorite – scares me..very creepy.
Maybe I’m getting more cynical as I get older, but I don’t get much from the story. Finding the building blocks of DNA is much different than finding DNA. What drives the amino acids to link up into DNA in life? That is the big question for me. It’s like saying we’ve found evidence of water in space because we detected hydrogen and oxygen, the “building blocks” of water.
Someone needs to show the mechanism that assembles the building blocks into real DNA before I get too impressed.
This story reminds me of my college biology professor’s view that life (probably in the form of blue-green algae) came to planet Earth on a meteorite or space ship to start the evolutionary process.
My professor had just concluded lecturing on how life cannot come from non-life. Then he asks us to turn the page to begin his lecture on evolution. I raised my hand to mention that the two points of view were in opposition to each other. “You cannot hold that life cannot come from non-life and also believe in evolution, can you?”
He responded that the two ideas were not incompatible if you realize life could have come to Earth from a meteorite or space ship. I asked “How did that life originate unless there was a creator?”
“Oh, that question goes beyond the bounds of science because we don’t have anything to observe to decide the question.”
This was not a satisfying answer coming from a man who believes in space ships but had never seen one.
My other problem with evolution in that class was the complete neglect of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Grant Sewell authored a peer-reviewed paper this year on this very subject. See http://www.math.utep.edu/Faculty/sewell/AML_3497.pdf
Darwinists complained and the paper was withdrawn. The paper was not withdrawn because of “any errors or technical problems found by the reviewers or editors,” but because it was more philosophical than mathematical. After the withdrawal, the publisher provided an apology and a cash payment to the author. See http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/sincere-and-heartfelt-apologies-to-granville-sewell-from-the-math-journal-that-dumped-his-article-due-to-darwinist-pressure/
Science disputes are interesting, are they not?
Guanine Cytosine etc are complex enough I’m convinced
I think this has been known for a while…… seeing that one of the long-time readers commentators here has the moniker……“Amino acids in meteorites”…..
When I put a few chemicals in a test tube they never multiply. From a few simple amino acids to complex LIFE is a huge step. Most likely, the same (and more) amino acids where already here. And who’s to say that those meteorites are not coming from other planets or moon inside our own solar system?
it seems like NASA’s goal is to explain life without God, Evolution is still the largest scientific fraud.
Why is the under-title about amino acids when the article (and the picture!) is about nucleobases? I am amused!
Hm ‘Seeds of Life”?. This theory depends on the evolutionary theory to end up with life as we know it. Seeing the questions and holes opening up in evolution these days I think this is a bit of a stretch.
Just a nit to pick (for accuracy)…
“NASA finds proof that amino acids in meteorites originate in space.” was followed by a paragraph on DNA, which left me wondering for a bit.
Just to be clear, amino acids are the building blocks for protein, nucleobases are the building blocks for DNA. The new discovery is of finding nucleobases, not amino acids (that’s old news).
“nine of which were recovered from Antarctica”
I am not 100% convinced, until that meteorite is picked up on the moon.So please,
NASA, go to the moon and find it. But first, stop all your fiddling around here on earth.
That is for other organisations to do, remember?
Robert,
The next question would be, how often would complex life develop from the single celled life forms.
That process seems to have taken some 3 or 4 billion years on this planet. On how many planets will the conditions necessary for life remain stable enough over a 4 billion year period?
The origin of life story just got a boost because without Pan Spermia there isn’t one. You see, the cell is a complex, organised, wet-ware chemical information management system acting as a logical computational machine of linked logical modules acting on matter, information and energy guided by digitally encoded information on tracks which, in total in the avg human, would stretch to the sun and back 600 times. Is the Peacock an expert in light phase shift Quantum offset? It’s feathers are. There is no pigment in Peacock feathers. How do you answer that? What more do you have to see out there before you realize…………..the obvious.