Theoretical origin of life; ribose found in meteorites (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, November 21, 2019, 21:03 (1618 days ago) @ David Turell

Some amino acids and sugars have been found before:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191121095004.htm

"Researchers from Tohoku University, Hokkaido University, JAMSTEC, and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center investigated meteorites and found ribose and other sugars. These sugars possessed distinct carbon-isotope compositions, differing from terrestrial biological sugars, indicating their extraterrestrial origin. The results suggest that the sugars formed in the early solar system and made their way to earth via meteorites.

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"Amino acids and nucleobases, other vitally important compounds in the building block of life, have been found in meteorites previously. Scientists have known of the existence of sugars in meteorites. However, research to date has largely revealed sugar-related compounds (sugar acids and sugar alcohols) and the simplest sugar (dihydroxy acetone), compounds not considered essential for life.

"Formation of bio-essential sugars, including ribose, on the prebiotic Earth, is considered to have been possible. However, there is no geological evidence of their formation. Furthermore, it is not clear which and how much sugar(s) formed on the prebiotic Earth.

"With the current research evidencing the delivery of bio-essential sugars, it is plausible that extraterrestrial sugar contributed to the formation of primordial RNA on the prebiotic Earth. This, in turn, has the possibility of being a factor in the origin of life.

"'The next step is to investigate the chirality of the sugars in more meteorites and to investigate how much sugars were provided from space and how the extraterrestrial sugar influenced life's homochirality" says the team."

Comment: These sugars are not shown to be same as those in life. Ribose in RNA is right handed, and natural ribose comes both right and left handed forms.