Important for some Abiogenesis studies. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-unraveling-life-scientists-cool-sugar.html There is a link to the paper which is open access. There are a few approaches to Abiogenesis and organics forming in space and seeding the earth is one line of enquiry. Jury is out for mere mortals like me but some giants in the field reject this as an important mechanism. Reason? Once the sugars (and bases, amino acids and 1000 of other organics isolated from meteorites) hit the earth every day what then? For researchers like Jerry Coyne, the mechanism is key not the building blocks. However the fact that lots of interesting organic and pre biotic chemistry happened billions of years ago in the deep cold of space should give us confidence life found a way here naturally. Open access paper here. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adl3236
Got to get that first simple replicator assembled by chance, have it survive long enough to stumble into a protective container (or maybe it required that from the start), and then the snowball rolls. So this is a proxy experiment conducted on Earth showing the viability of this molecule forming under deep space conditions. That thereby goes beyond the study described by a paper in October 2023(PDF) that seems to have been a computer simulation supporting "complex organic molecules" arising in interstellar space. Both of these "surrogate environment" research endeavors contrasting to claims over the years of detecting prebiotic ingredients in deep space, meteorites, and asteroid samples. Given the inability to visit certain realms directly or having to rely on the luck of long-distance discovery via analysis of astronomy data, these are -- of course -- necessary substitute approaches. _
As I understand it, though, what this work does is explore a possible mechanism for how glyceric acid may be synthesised extraterrestrially. It does not add to our understanding of abiogenesis, since the presence of glyceric acid in meteorites is already established. However I found the article interesting , as I had not realised that glyceric acid may be a precursor to such a wide range of biologically important molecules. One apparent loose end is that the synthesis is racemic, whereas I presume that in biology, glyceric acid and biologically related molecules are stereospecific. How this arose seems to remain one of the big unanswered questions of abiogenesis.
They are now isolating and analysing samples from Bennu? I get the names of the probes mixed up with the actual bodies. I'll check. They have isolated Uracil and a vitamin (apologies on tablet and it's a pain to Google then come back, sometimes i lose what I have posted) Samples from that Asteroid have been sent to labs globally. They will find sugars, bases, amino acids and other interesting organics but I think that's a given now. It is a more interesting question as you said, why we get preference on earth but a mixture out there. It will be just some road evolution took with RNA and protein synthesis. I will keep posting these Abiogenesis studies. Not all, I will pick selected that readers like yourself may like.
