Scientists keep finding life's building blocks in more places. Now it looks like critical precursors to life can form in the frigid vacuum of outer space.
. Now it looks like we can add peptides to the list of organic building blocks that occur naturally in space.
In their paper, the researchers point out that complex molecules are present in the interstellar medium . Previous researchers have simulated ISM conditions in labs and produced the same complex molecules. But there’s a limit to that type of research. “Until now, however, only relatively small molecules of biological interest have been demonstrated to form experimentally under typical space conditions,” they explain.
“Here we prove experimentally that the condensation of carbon atoms on the surface of cold solid particles leads to the formation of isomeric polyglycine monomers . Following encounters between aminoketene molecules, they polymerize to produce peptides of different lengths,” the authors write. “Single carbon atoms are surprisingly reactive, even at the lowest temperatures,” Krasnokutski said. “They act as ‘molecular glue’ that joins molecules together, and turns inorganic substances into organic ones.”
Those peptide bands only showed up when the team warmed their samples up above the temperature inside molecular clouds. So they may occur naturally when a new star forms, or when the dust grains are deposited on a planet’s surface in a star’s habitable zone. “Together, the low-temperature chemistry forming aminoketene and the warming-up letting the aminoketene molecules bond to form peptide could create peptides on interstellar dust grains,” the press release says in summary.
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