NASA astrophysicists were able to create DNA’s sugar in laboratory conditions that mimic interstellar space. The sugar molecular is the D in DNA. “We don’t yet know whether life is common in the universe, but we’re pretty sure the presence of life’s building blocks is not a limiting factor.”
Michel Nuevo, a researcher at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley and was the lead author of the paper. The results represent the first solid evidence of the formation of DNA’s sugar in an astrophysical setting.
We are finding that water and liquid water are common in space. We are finding that planets and rocky planets are common. We are finding that moons with liquid water and rocket bodies are common.
Liquid water, under ice on rocky moons are on over a dozen bodies in our own solar system.
The building blocks of life should be common.
There has not been confirmation of a lot of single cell life around space but there should be a lot of DNA and RNA and amino acids.
This Provides More Evidence that at Least Simple Life is Probably Everywhere
All of life’s critical chemical building blocks should be widespread in the universe and potentially seed other planets as well.
Nature Communications – Deoxyribose and deoxysugar derivatives from photoprocessed astrophysical ice analogues and comparison to meteorites
Abstract – Deoxyribose and deoxysugar derivatives from photoprocessed astrophysical ice analogues and comparison to meteorites
Sugars and their derivatives are essential to all terrestrial life. Their presence in meteorites, together with amino acids, nucleobases, amphiphiles, and other compounds of biological importance, may have contributed to the inventory of organics that played a role in the emergence of life on Earth.
Sugars, including ribose (the sugar of RNA), and other sugar derivatives have been identified in laboratory experiments simulating photoprocessing of ices under astrophysical conditions. In this work, we report the detection of 2-deoxyribose (the sugar of DNA) and several deoxysugar derivatives in residues produced from the ultraviolet irradiation of ice mixtures consisting of H2O and CH3OH.
The detection of deoxysugar derivatives adds to the inventory of compounds of biological interest that can form under astrophysical conditions and puts constraints on their abiotic formation pathway. Finally, we report that some of the deoxysugar derivatives found in our residues are also newly identified in carbonaceous meteorites.