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.
Related Link
› Related videos from NASA Goddard’s Scientific Visualization Studio
Kip Hansen says:
August 10, 2011 at 8:30 am
If the same amount of money they put in anthropogenic global warming science was put into research to find God, I am pretty sure they would come down to the same conclusion. Of course models would show otherwise. Some people put too much trust in models and others in God.
Dave Springer says:
August 10, 2011 at 8:18 am
http://www.physik.uzh.ch/groups/aegerter/teaching/Biophys/eigen.pdf
http://jaguar.biologie.hu-berlin.de/~wolfram/pages/seminar_theoretische_biologie_2007/literatur/schaber/Eigen1978Naturwissenschaften65a.pdf
There are things we don’t understand yet. Just because we don’t have all the answers, it doesn’t follow that there must be a supernatural cause. People once thought diseases were caused by demonic possession. How many people still believe that? Today, given our knowledge of pathogens, the notion of disease from demons is obviously silly.
The process that gave us medicine is in progress with questions like the origin of life, evolution, the origin of the universe, and the basis of consciousness. We don’t have all the answers yet. There is no guarantee that we will ever know all the answers, but that doesn’t mean we need to resort to a supernatural cause just because someone demands an answer now.
DesertYote says:
August 10, 2011 at 9:16 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.
The probability of our existence can also be described as ‘vanishing’. It is an absurdly small probability. Glad to see we beat the odds.
HenryP,
That always leaves the question of “Where did God come from?”.
Personally, I find the whole discussion rather tiring.
Theo Goodwin says:
August 10, 2011 at 8:49 am
Do you mean Dawkins, not Dawson? Anyway, finding complex organic molecules extra terrestrially shows the building of organic molecules essential to life is natural and ubiquitous in the universe.
The Gray Monk says:
August 10, 2011 at 2:52 am
The Grey Monk’s analogy “Roughly the equivalent of throwing a boxfull of car parts randomly into the air and getting a fully assembled Rolls-Royce … ” is simplistic and easily countered. What if those parts have a natural affinity or there are physical mechanisms assisting the the assemblage and there were a billion years available to achieve the assemblage. And once a component is assembled, say a carburetor, it does not unassemble during the following tosses into the air. This type of intelligent design argument is facile but fundamentally weak.
A note on the fallacy of presentism is appropriate for some of the comments above. The term originates in ordinary historical scholarship, and there is a short definition in the wikipedia —
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism_%28literary_and_historical_analysis%29
In regard to the classic “origin of life” problem, some polemicists will point to the extreme complexity of contemporary organisms and conclude that life cannot start by natural means. The simple comment about a sterile world is that there is no competition, so the early life form can be as simple and slowly growing as possible. For example, if a net doubling of mass takes a million years, then the environment will be dominated by the life form in a geologically short period of time. Ten million years would multiply the mass by 1024 or ~3 orders. So, 20 million is 6 orders, 40 million is 12 orders, and so on. Soon — in the geological sense — the new environment will supply a substrate for a mutant life form that can take advantage of the changed conditions. Early organisms would not even be recognized as life in a contemporary laboratory, since the incorporation of labeled precursors would be near the noise level.
Ironically, the creationist Dean Kenyon wrote one of the better books on early conditions — Biochemical Predestination — along with Gary Steinman. The early world was nothing like ours.
And, if one is interested in concepts of panspermia, the wikipedia article is pretty good, and there are a number of essays at the panspermia website —
http://www.panspermia.org/
HenryP says:
August 10, 2011 at 9:23 am
This type of argument always invites the question of what created “God”. Saying that God “always was” is no more satisfying than saying that God “never was”. Maybe it’s circular, a chicken and egg problem; did God create man or man create God? Anyway, a creator, the concept of an intelligent designer, is not science since it is not falsifiable. Meanwhile, man pokes away at the secrets of life and advances in scientific knowledge, all be it slowly.
Life is everywhere. Get over it.
Fred Hoyle may have been right.
We still suffer from the delusion that Man and the Earth is a very special exciting place when in reality it is well known that Earth is “an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the galaxy”.
Harry Dale Huffman says:
August 10, 2011 at 4:48 am
our solar system has a real history — of deliberate past design(s)
were all the other star systems with the multitude of planets also deliberately designed? or only ours?
Robert Austin says:
“is simplistic and easily countered. What if those parts have a natural affinity or there are physical mechanisms assisting the the assemblage and there were a billion years available to achieve the assemblage. And once a component is assembled, say a carburetor, it does not unassemble during the following tosses into the air. This type of intelligent design argument is facile but fundamentally weak.”
Actually his argument still stands as your counter assumes a natural affinity or physical mechanism exist to make this happen. The problem still lies on where the heck all this stuff came from in the first place. And to add to your later argument on arguing about where “God” came from we can easily turn the tables and say where did “Space” come from and all these wonderful elements and mechanisms we enjoy so much (however much we take them for granted). Even if we figure out all this and the rest of the secrets to life, at the end of the day one must ask what the practical advantage it to it all. Whether we find Noah’s Ark or the Missing Link, when the crowds of curiosity die down, what can we take from it? I still have to go to work and earn money and provide for my family. I’m sure plenty of practical things will come from all this research, but I doubt any of it will be connected to the theory evolution and how it brought us to be. That will leave us with the same circular argument of whether there is a God or not, as you say, science cannot touch that, science merely remains a process in which we study nature or creation, whichever you choose. So while some try to figure out how we came to be and what it means, some will settle on what that is and make use of it. Scientific knowledge is great, but what can be made of it, that is where wisdom lies, and wisdom is better than a host of knowledge.
I dunno. I’m not convinced by what I read that they found organic stuff from space. Just saying. Life is everywhere on this planet and finding traces of life chemicals on something lying aroud on earth is not totally convincing. YMMV.
And who says selected carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and/or phosphorus components can only be assembled in this complex manner in “space”, whatever that means. The Earth is also in “space” and so is everything else so the statement is not an Aha of any proportion. We already know we are only “dust in the wind” and will return to same. NASA is no doubt continuing to look for $$$. Nothing new here. It would be more surprising if only here on Earth are these combinations possible. And said combinations may be the “building blocks of life” but are no more alive than the individual molecular components.
I was watching Ben Stein’s interview Richard Dawkins about this. here is the clip:
Time stamp 3:45 mins
Dawkins seems to think that complex molecules were seeded here on earth from “an extraterrestrial being” BUT.. here is curiously odd part….That they evolved naturally from nothing on some other world. ummm wha?
In my view, the lack of evidence of the genesis of life on earth, does not inspire me to think that there is evidence elsewhere. It seems to me that believing in aliens as designers, like Dawkins does, is less likely than a God of creation.
In essence, the priests at NASA don’t want any of us to accept any other religion then the baseless belief that they have in aliens and anthropogenic global warming.
Robert Austin says:
August 10, 2011 at 10:05 am
“Do you mean Dawkins, not Dawson? Anyway, finding complex organic molecules extra terrestrially shows the building of organic molecules essential to life is natural and ubiquitous in the universe.”
Yes, I meant Dawkins. Thanks. DNA is necessary for life as we know it. But DNA is not alive. Organic molecules essential to life are not alive. To have a science of biology, or biology as we know it, you must have something that is alive. If you are a Dawkins, you treat DNA as if it has an existence independent of living things. In addition, Dawkins treats DNA as if it were the secret of life, yet it is not alive. In all his talk about DNA and organic molecules Dawkins does not arrive at something that is alive.
Here is a different approach to Dawkins’ error. Some people believe that their human intelligence could be preserved in a fancy digital computer. Such a belief treats human intelligence as independent of the human exercising the intelligence. That is what I object to. Aristotle would also object. To me, such thinking is fully outside the realm of science and worthy of the name religion. Dawkins’ God just happens to be DNA. Now he needs to tell us about the “living thing” that the DNA “created,” “combined with,” or whatever.
In case readers have lost my track, I am discussing claims from the article such as:
“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.”
Is it not evident from this sentence that we could have a DNA kit delivered by InterGalactic UPS and still not have a clue what biological life is? If we do not have a clue what biological life is, how are we better off than the theists?
And before someone accuses me of being a religious fanatic who is embarrassing WUWT, please note that I have asserted nothing about religion. What I have done is what any good scientist (sceptic) must do, criticize the science (or at least this formulation of it.)
HenryP says:
August 10, 2011 at 9:23 am
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! “
That is an easy answer, we are in a rebounding universe that always existed and intermittantly recycles itself. Of course, then one must ask if this is easier to believe in than a God who always existed and created the universe. More to the point in my mind is the Goldilocks nature of physical laws which allow everything to exist as they are. What a coincidence!
At 11:11 AM on 10 August, Paul Westhaver writes about “watching Ben Stein’s interview Richard Dawkins about this” and embeds a clip from Ben Stein’s Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, going on to write:
Mr. Westhaver apparently missed my earlier reference to super-intelligent purple space squid, so I guess I’ll have to pull a direct quote from Ronald Bailey’s Reason magazine article (15 July 2008) based on the remarks he’d given in the FreedomFest 2008 debate “Is There Scientific Evidence for Intelligent Design in Nature?” I begin:
Mr. Bailey had concluded his remarks with:
I strongly recommend that readers in this forum review Mr. Bailey’s article from Reason and consider just what this “intelligent design” contention necessarily implies.
Speaking, of course, as a Pastafarian, I condemn all you heretics to the cheese-less, sauce-less cold beyond the Table of Feasting in the name of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
The question of a whether there is a God is Science. It is the single most important question of Science. (IMHO). Because Science, in everyone’s definition, is the physical description of the physical world…..not a process. It’s a shame that the vast brain trust in the Science community and their resources are shut off from approaching this subject by prejudice, semantics. mis-conceptions, bias, fear. Etc. Etc. The Sophistication of the designs around us and within us (whether designed or not) begs the question.
JimBob says:
August 10, 2011 at 6:30 am
. What drives the amino acids to link up into DNA in life?
(He means the nucleotides link up)
I have studied the literature on origins of life and found an embarassment of riches–there is no need to evoke some extraordinary measure to result in polymerization of carbonaceous molecules. It happens spontaneously, and the keynote of evolution can be better phrased as
“Some chemical species are more reactive than others, and some are more stable. Over time, some species persist both from luck and from stability. It is not all chance, but some favorable forms have occurred that made some living organisms much more likely than others to persist.”
We know that life began, not on the surface where humans live today, but at the ocean bottom, at ocean vents. Today vents have more variety of life forms (I lost the ref here and desperate to find it) and the Cambrian Explosion showed that shelled forms, at least, began in the abyss, not the surface.
The most relevant reference, overlooked by nearly all fascinated by this subject is Martell’s paper, showing that radioactivity causes nucleic acid precursors, nucleotides, to polymerize. The Earth itself is radioactive, and the oil from last year’s Macondo disaster released a lot of radioactivity into the Gulf of Mexico.
We know also in chemistry that reactions are driven until equilibrium is reached. Vents have strong gradients of acid/base and many other things, so the march from nonliving to living forms was energized.
The ref for Martell’s paper is
Martell, Edward A., Radionuclide-induced Evolution of DNA and the Origin of Life, J. Mol. Evol. 35:346-355. 1992.
I think it’s appropriate to ring in an article prepared for a lay audience in December 2007 by retired rocket scientist (and emphatic AGW skeptic) Dr. Jeff Glassman, titled “Conjecture, Hypothesis, Theory, Law: The Basis of Rational Argument,” in which he addressed both the AGW fraud and the “intelligent design” hoo-raw in his closing paragraphs:
I strongly recommend Dr. Glassman’s brief article, and will continue merrily to cite it to the distress of los warmistas and other politically malevolent whackjobs.
Like the creationists.
I know, it is a difficult concept
God says: I am who I am
He (3 person) also admits He was always there, and He created us because He was alone,
similar to you being without a mate
Be in-lightened (full of the knowledge given by God) or be enlightened (by your own knowledge)
–it is your choice.
I commend WUWT for not cutting remarks which are clearly religious rather than scientific
I have always said:
religion and science are two roads leading to the same thing: the truth
note the answer given by Jesus when asked by Pilate: What is Truth?
Ok, I wish people could separate this stuff. Then they would not have as many conflicts over it.
Science fails when it delves into belief (by delve I mean to practice). That is not to say that there is no room for “belief” in science. After all science is a search, and it starts with an intelligent desire to understand something observed. The hypothesis is something that a scientist “believes” is a plausible explanation for the observed phenomena. So, all science starts with some sort of faith that what is searched for exists. However, this is the only place for belief in the practice of science.
Science starts to fail to be “science”, when the search becomes biased. Evidence that what is searched for doesn’t exist is often difficult to accept by a scientist and any normal “human” scientist who invested in something they believed to be true would have such difficulty. However, if the scientist is actually engaged in the practice of science and their are no errors in obtaining the they accept the contrary evidence presented and must modify what they believe, and come up with a new belief that explains the old observations as well as the new.
Science is limited to explaining the observed world and no other. If a religious belief transcends the natural world, then Science can’t say anything about it period.
Religion on the other hand is a philosophy. I does not have the limitation of explaining what is observed by experimentation. This does not mean that Religion does not engage in observation and logical reasoning. It does, but only to the point of evangelical salesmanship to others. Religious explanations must simply be tested by an individual and if they make sense to such an individual (which could be non-sense to someone else) they are believed to be true. There is no “science” behind it at all. Religious tolerance is simply allowing others to believe things that don’t make since one self.
So, can we please limit the discussion to science. Leave Religion out of it.
There are some really good articles and research on the possibility of replicating RNA. RNA can fold like a protein to create macroscopic structures. In fact, James Ferris at the Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute has successfully been able to have RNA strands spontaneously assemble themselves into strands on a clay substrate. Niles Lehman, and his colleagues at Portland State RNA can self replicate.
Here are the links to the papers. Good stuff, and strictly science.
Astrophysics Magazine online, http://www.astrobio.net/exclusive/2646/how-did-life-get-started
Zenisek, S. M., Hayden, E. J., and Lehman, N. 2007. Genetic Exchange Leading to Self-Assembling RNA Species upon Encapsulation in Artificial Protocells. Artif. Life 13, 3 (Jul. 2007), 279-289. DOI= http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/artl.2007.13.3.279
Catalysis and Selectivity in Prebiotic Synthesis: Initiation of the Formation of Oligo(U)s on Montmorillonite Clay by Adenosine-5′-methylphosphate, 2005, Kong-Jiang Wang and James P. Ferris, Origins Life Evol. Biosphere 35, 185-226
Now, what I’d like NASA to show me is the infra red spectra of gas clouds with a sufficient density of Nucleic Acids to have enough RNA for the odds to be right.
Tucci78 Quotes:
August 10, 2011 at 11:50 am
“So, since our esteemed opponents are agnostic with regard to the “source of design,” and because intelligent design cannot rule out the hypothesis that super-intelligent purple space squids are not the “source of design” of life on earth, I will provisionally accept that hypothesis for the remainder of my talk.”
Actually, he had accepted it earlier. If you buy Dawkins’ work, you certainly accept that DNA exists independently of biological life as we know it on Earth. If you accept that, why not just go the full monty and call DNA God? There is no need for space aliens, though the idea inspires some such as Tom Cruise.
Excellent post, Tucci. May I call you Tucci?
The belief that life can form from non-life requires more faith than I have. People say amino acids are the building blocks of life. Certainly that is true, but water can also be called a building block of life since life is not possible without water. What do you get when you mix amino acids with water? A protein shake. You certainly do not get life.
Another interesting discussion around origins is the story of the Big Bang. Non-scientific types may think the Big Bang disproves the existence of God. Actually, the opposite is true. The Big Bang provides strong evidence a Big Banger is at work. Where did all that energy come from? I strongly recommend the book by Robert Jastrow – God and the Astronomers. It is a fascinating story of the discovery of the Big Bang and what it means for the origin of the universe.
Scientists now understand the universe had a beginning and will have an end. So, the next question is – What does that mean?
Earth is not in space?
Regarding my draw from Ronald Bailey’s article “Attack of the Super-Intelligent Purple Space Squid Creators” (Reason magazine, 15 July 2008), at 12:50 PM on 10 August we read Theo Goodwin asserting that:
Oopsie. Theo (may I call you Theo?), the only thing Mr. Bailey had stated prior to the initial paragraph of his that I’d quoted was:
That’s it. Mr. Bailey hadn’t “accepted” anything of the Discovery Institute’s contention other than what he’d specifically quoted, which he recapitulates as follows: “our esteemed opponents are agnostic with regard to the ‘source of design’.”
And what of “Dawkins’ work” is there that you’re expecting anyone to “buy“? In that interview from Mr. Stein’s abysmal failure of a movie (as Mr. Bailey make explicitly clear), Dr. Dawkins responded to Mr. Stein’s request for “any circumstances under which intelligent design might have occurred,” and Dr. Dawkins mentioned the widely-known conjecture of directed panspermia, an idea – definitely not Dr. Dawkins’ own, and not one he has ever endorsed to the best of my appreciation – that’s been knocking around for more than three decades.
On the mistaken premise that Mr. Stein was making a reasonable and honest request, Dr. Dawkins responded reasonably and honestly. There are a lot of dubious – even whacky – conjectures floating around in every scientific discipline, and to fail of acknowledgement that these conjectures have been advanced is to violate the standards of intellectual integrity.
Such a violation was perpetrated by Mr. Stein when he played a “gotcha!” game on Dr. Dawkins in that execrable excuse for a movie.
Jeez, Theo, haven’t you yet learned about how the manipulation of interview footage can be used “to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind”?