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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They forgot one thing. These meteorites fell threw the AIR before hitting the ice, Earth Contamination could have easily taken place before it hit the ice. Impossible to prove this on Earth, they have to go into outer space and get a sample and do the study there to truly prove it.
I wouldn’t call this finding the proof, just more data that supports the theory.
The argument from ignorance is very popular with creationists, that’s obvious.
Ok, this is fantastic stuff, all this DNA NASA meteorite business, but maybe you ought to mention, just once, something about the riots in the UK, that began in London, and has now led 2 the death of 4 or 5 people:
http://gnstr.wordpress.com/2011/08/08/london-riots/
http://wp.me/p13vzx-he
“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”
That’s Granville Sewell. Great guy. Wonderful sense of humor. We’ve had many conversations. I always recommend his papers on the subject beginning with “A Mathematician’s View of Evolution”.
Is there some specific reason my first comment:
Dave Springer says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
August 10, 2011 at 5:23 am
has been sitting in moderation for 3 hours while 25 comments after it have been approved?
REPLY: Yes, sleep. And when I wake up and log on the comment list in WP is from newest to oldest. Then I had to take a break to go to loo and get coffee before resuming. Any other complaints? – Anthony
May we now begin discussing super-intelligent purple space squid?
The ‘prebiotic’ chemicals found in the meteorites can be made in any chemistry lab –> “… an identical suite of nucleobases and nucleobase analogs were generated in non-biological chemical reactions containing hydrogen cyanide, ammonia, and water.” Thus this report is a big ‘so what’. We believe that Earth chemistry holds for most of the known universe wherever conditions are similar — we should not be surprised that non-biological chemical reactions that form amino acids can happen elsewhere. This ‘discovery’ does not mean that Earth life may have originated in space, as the same chemical reactions can just have easily have occurred in an Earth environment. Chemistry does not mean life –> exactly what makes a live cat different from a dead cat is still a deep mystery, and I suspect it will remain so as long as science denies itself the right to investigate the spiritual.
Nucleobases being formed on earth or in space is essential but insufficient for self replicating “life”. That requires DNA replicating and error correction systems, protein expression, material processing, photosynthesis, and energy processing – all working together to begin with. The probability of that is astronomically remote by all known physics and chemistry laws.
Furthermore, the four laws of nature provide no basis for the “information” found in the genome.
See Hubert P. Yockey Information Theory, Evolution and the Origin of Life.
William Dembski, No Free Lunch, Why Specified Complexity Cannot be Purchased without Intelligence.
Werner Gitt, In the Beginning was information
Somebody tell CERN that NASA found the “God” particle!
Ron Cram says:
August 10, 2011 at 6:37 am
‘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?”’
You had him at this point.
DNA is not life but a component of life as we know it, namely, the communicator of hereditary structure in biological beings. The only story that DNA can tell is a story of evolution, not a story about the beginnings of biological life.
When the asteroid theorists say that life might have come from space, all that they can mean is that DNA might have come from space. The claim that biological life came from space requires that something “having life as we know it” came from space, whether or not it contained a hereditary structure like DNA.
So, no, there is no evidence that biological life came from space in the fact that precursors of DNA might have come from space.
DNA might have come from space. This DNA might have become the mechanism for communicating hereditary structure in biological life on Earth, but there is in all this no evidence that the biological life came from space.
The point of view that I am exploring was created by Richard Dawson in The Selfish Gene and then replicated in many other books. He treats genes as directing the course of life through evolution for the benefit of genes. This point of view is entirely Platonic rather than Aristotelian. We end up, as Dawson has, with DNA a non-living thing directing life for its benefit. There is no explanation of how the DNA and Life got together.
So, on Dawson’s view, it makes perfect sense that some beings sent DNA to Earth as a means of replicating themselves or some lesser thing. However, this DNA need not exist in biological life but could exist in electronic life or whatever kind of life you care to imagine. There remains the problem of explaining why the DNA became a vehicle for biological life on Earth rather than some other kind of life.
In summary, what Dawson has wrought is a reification of hereditary communication in DNA and its accidental existence in biological life on Earth. And this kind of thinking is supposed to be simpler and more scientific than religious thought?
The take-home message is only abiotic purine synthesis is possible. Makes a better case for life arising spontaneously. It would be ridiculous to imagine that the origin of life depended on purines or amino acids coming from meteorites. What we need to find are conditions on early Earth that could easily produce amino acids, purines, pyrimidines, and ribose all connected via phosphates. We need RNA floating in chemical soup containing nucleotides. Very likely the conditions needed were found underground.
Here’s how purines and pyrimidines get made in the body.
http://www.gout-aware.com/Synthesis-of-Purine-Nucleotides.html
With RNA and maybe some proteinaceous goo acting as a pseudo enzyme, chemical evolution could have occurred. Eigen hypercycles develop spontaneously; i.e. a chemical process that creates local order by using available energy more efficently and thereby developing a growth advantage over other competing processes. Mutation and cooperation are key factors.
At some point, the processes have to become compartmentalized and still be able to gather raw materials, eliminate waste, and reproduce. That is, they must form cells. Where are the lipids in meteorites?
After forming cells, DNA might be needed.
We are discussing Earth life. Exobiota might use other bases if they have an D/RNA analog. What made Earth life pick the five bases we use (A,C,G,T and U)? Why do we have the carbohydrate and amino acid stereochemistry we observe? Local conditions? Random selection? It would seem reasonable that all possible combinations were tried. There may have been life on Earth that had a very difference genetic code and didn’t even use the same bases or amino acids. One type of life eventually out-competed the rest.
Life elsewhere may be constructed quite differently from us, using different bases (if any) and different amino acids (if any). We have no idea what the range may be for biochemical diversity in the universe. The Star Trek idea that DNA is the basis of all life is almost certainly wrong and very naive.
Humans go home!!
Wasn’t it billions of years before this planet was capable of supporting life? It took billions of years (perhaps as much as 4 billion years) to cool.
“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.”
I’m still waiting for the instructions that accompanied the “kit”.
BTW—
The story of the Origin of just the basics:
—————————————-
1. Atomic Nitrogen—Pre-Life Molecules Present In Comets ScienceDaily (July 27, 2006) — Evidence of atomic nitrogen in interstellar gas clouds suggests that pre-life molecules may be present in comets, a discovery that gives a clue about the early conditions that gave rise to life, according to researchers from the University of Michigan and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
“A lot of complex and simple biotic molecules have nitrogen and it’s much easier to make complex molecules from atomic nitrogen,” Bergin said. “All DNA bases have atomic nitrogen in them, amino acids also have atomic nitrogen in them. By that statement what we’re saying is if you have nitrogen in its simplest form, the atomic form, it’s much more reactive and can more easily form complex prebiotic organics in space”. These complex organics were incorporated into comets and were provided to the Earth. (Sébastien Maret, research fellow in astronomy at the University of Michigan, and Edwin Bergin, a professor of astronomy at the University of Michigan–ScienceDaily (July 27, 2006))
——————————————
2. Chirality — Possible Mechanism For Creating ‘Handedness’ In Biological Molecules
ScienceDaily (Dec. 2, 2008) — The basic molecules that make up all living things have a predetermined chirality or “handedness,” similar to the way people are right- or left-handed. This chirality has a profound influence on the chemistry and molecular interactions of living organisms. The inception of chirality from the elementary building blocks of matter is one of the great mysteries of the origin of life. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory have discovered a way to induce this handedness in pre-biological molecules. “Understanding how the molecules necessary for life originated is one of the most basic scientific questions in biochemistry,” Argonne chemist Richard Rosenberg said. “Chirality plays a fundamental role in biological processes and researchers have been trying to discover the mechanisms that led to this property for years.”
Rosenberg used X-rays from the Advanced Photon Source to bombard chiral molecules adsorbed on a magnetic substrate and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy to track changes in the molecular bonds.
He found that changing the magnetization direction in relation to the high-intensity X-ray beam created an excess of one chirality over another. Changing the magnetization direction reverses the spin polarization of the secondary, or low-energy, electrons emitted from the substance. Iron is a common element and is magnetic in many form and ionizing radiation and magnetic fields are prevalent throughout the universe. Based on the Argonne results, it is conceivable that chirality could have been introduced by irradiation of molecules as they traveled through the universe while adsorbed on a magnetized substrate in a dust cloud, meteor, comet or on a primitive planet. “Our study shows that spin-polarized secondary electrons interacting with chiral molecules could produce a significant excess of a given chirality in pre-biological molecules,” Rosenberg said. A paper on
————————————————
3. RNA had no enzymes to catalyze — . RNA, the single-stranded precursor to DNA, normally expands one nucleic base at a time, growing sequentially like a linked chain. The problem is that in the primordial world RNA molecules didn’t have enzymes to catalyze this reaction, and while RNA growth can proceed naturally, the rate would be so slow the RNA could never get more than a few pieces long (for as nucleic bases attach to one end, they can also drop off the other). Ernesto Di Mauro and colleagues examined if there was some mechanism to overcome this thermodynamic barrier, by incubating short RNA fragments in water of different temperatures and pH. They found that under favorable conditions (acidic environment and temperature lower than 70 degrees Celsius), pieces ranging from 10-24 in length could naturally fuse into larger fragments, generally within 14 hours. The RNA fragments came together as double-stranded structures then joined at the ends. The fragments did not have to be the same size, but the efficiency of the reactions was dependent on fragment size (larger is better, though efficiency drops again after reaching around 100) and the similarity of the fragment sequences. The researchers note that this spontaneous fusing, or ligation, would a simple way for RNA to overcome initial barriers to growth and reach a biologically important size; at around 100 bases long, RNA molecules can begin to fold into functional, 3D shapes.
————————————————-
What are the other problems to overcome for the origin of life story to have one aside from:
1. Atomic Nitrogen
2. Chirality
3, RNA Had no Enzymes to Catalyze
It’s been known for a long time that interstellar space shows the absorption spectra for simple amino acids, sugars, and nucleic base. They just form naturally over the eons in the cold of space. Thus, when a star forms, planets will accrue quite a bit of organic material, already biased in its composition. These space compounds, in their most stable forms, are also those used in biology mostly for the same reasons. Glucose is the sugar of choice, for example, as it is the lowest energy hexose.
“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.”
Not sure I put too much stock in non-intelligent randomization. Origin of life will always be a discussion of philosophy and science. The science is the process we use to study our surroundings, but can we ever prove what we theorize? We cannot go back in time and we as yet cannot explain how we go from a single cell organism to a full human body, which has so many parts that it cannot exist without (I would hate to be the guy without a liver or left arm halfway through the evolution cycle). You could say that each new replication was improved, but that goes against what we witness in life now, humans bear humans, cats bear cats, and so on. Yes there are different variations, but the basics are the same. Then if you figure that all out, what is next, what is the purpose of life? Most people have a hard time being told they exist due to accidental or even probable but purposeless causes (then again we always have EVO). Even then all the “right ingredients” still just happen to magically exist in space as if they were always there, which brings infinity into the question and with that is more philosophy. Science is a process linked to our environment which we are a part of as well, so areas tend to cross as some point.
anorak2
August 10, 2011 at 6:25 am
###
Thanks to moonbats like Carl Sagan, you and everyone else misses the point of the Drakes Equation. Its purpose was NOT to show that ET probably exists, but to point out the futility in calculating the probability of his existence. It also demonstrate, by the multiplication of a string of very tiny numbers, that the chance of ETs existence is pretty damn small, < 10^-20.
Nuke says:
August 10, 2011 at 8:56 am
“Wasn’t it billions of years before this planet was capable of supporting life? It took billions of years (perhaps as much as 4 billion years) to cool.”
======
No, it apparently cooled pretty quickly. What is more of a mystery is how the sun — which we believe was substantially weaker 4 billion years ago managed to keep liquid water sloshing around. But it apparently did as we can find sedimentary deposits back to 3.8B ma and probably before (I’m too lazy to look it up). The earliest possibly organic remains in sediments date to about 3.8B ma. It seems pretty solid that life on Earth has been around for at least 3 billion years and very likely longer.
I’ve been thinking about my college biology class some decades ago and remember that we discussed the possibility blue-green algae came to Earth on a meteorite but I remember now that my professor had rejected the meteorite idea in favor of the space ship. In his view, algae would probably not have survived the heating it would undergo as the meteorite came through an early Earth atmosphere. For this reason he favored the view that the algae was brought here by aliens in the safety of the inside of their space ship. Being a careful scientist, he was unwilling to speculate on whether the aliens brought the blue-green algae here intentionally or unintentionally.
And yes, the author of the paper I cited earlier is Granville Sewell, not Grant Sewell. My mistake.
Nuke,
The earth itself is only around 4.3 to 4.5 billion years old.
I’ve read of recent research that claims to have found evidence for single celled life within a few hundred million years of the earth’s creation.
Does this have anything to do with the orange stuff found floating on both coasts a couple of days ago?
The same stuff identified as microscopic eggs that came with the rain that fell?
I note that some of you made general comments on the idea of life having been created by a greater power (God)
but no-one was specific.
So let me ask a specific question from:
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/why-do-i-believe-in-god
I quote
“Nevertheless, you say that you still believe there is no God or you don’t know if there is a God. You think it is reasonable to believe that everything you see around you came by accident. Life did not come forth by creation (a plan) but by evolution. You believe in Murphy’s law (Murphy’s law = given that there is a chance that something will happen, then, if there is enough time available, eventually it will happen). You refuse to accept that the creation of the whole universe was part of God’s plan for us to be born. Now I will ask you: never mind the question about how life came into being and how incredibly small the chance is that you are alive today. What about the next question: where does matter itself come from? Where did all the atoms that form the person that you are and the earth that you are living on and the air that you are breathing, came from? If you believe there is no God, then obviously in the beginning there must have been absolutely nothing. Good for you if you believe in the Big Bang theory. But the question still remains: where did all the matter that forms the universe, originate from? You see what the problem is? It does not make sense to believe that there is no God because it is not logical. In fact, if you believe there is no God, you are actually saying that you believe that out of absolutely nothing and guided by absolutely nobody, an incredible intelligent and intellectual person (like yourself) with a material body came into being. Now, for you to believe that such a miracle could have happened, you must actually have a much bigger faith than that of a person simply believing and admitting that there is a Higher Power, a God who created him for a specific plan and purpose! “
Some believe that life here began out there that there are still brothers of man fighting for survival ….
never mind wrong forum I miss BSG …LOL
While I don’t doubt such compounds exist in meteorites, I believe that the amount of them would have been fairly inconsequential compared to the amounts of them that would have been formed on Earth with the environment we had here. There would have been significant UV radiation as Earth wouldn’t have had much/any ozone layer, a lot of lightning, a lot of geothermal activity, etc. Earth’s atmosphere would also probably have been much thicker at the time, too, as most of our water would have been in the form of vapor as the surface would have been too hot for it to really accumulate much.
So yeah, we might have collected a few of these sort of molecules here and there but I believe those would have been swamped by the amount of such molecules being formed on a daily basis right here.