The building blocks of life in clouds of interstellar gas and dust

Cairo – By Mohamed Salah –

According to the British newspaper “Daily Mail”, the scientific team has discovered that glycine, the simplest amino acid and an important building block for life, can be formed under the harsh conditions that govern chemistry in space.

This indicates that glycine, and possibly other amino acids, could form in dense interstellar clouds before transforming into new stars and planets.

Amino acids are also stored in comets, dating back to the early days and then transporting them to smaller planets.

“The building blocks of proteins related to life on Earth could also form in the very early stages of star formation and continue until planetary systems are established,” said lead researcher Dr Sergio Ebolo.

Comets are the purest material in our solar system and reflect the molecular structure present when the sun and planets were about to form.

The discovery of wisteria in comet 67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko, and in samples brought to Earth by the Stardust mission indicates that amino acids were formed long before stars or planets.

And a team of astrophysicists and astrochemical modelers have been able to prove that it is possible for wisteria to form on the surface of grains of ice dust in the absence of energy thanks to “dark chemistry”.

The team is made up of researchers from all over the world and is based in the Astrophysics Laboratory at the Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands.

Dr Lobolo, from Queen Mary University in London, said dark chemistry is chemistry without the need for energetic radiation and forms in dark clouds far from the stars.

“In the lab, we were able to simulate conditions in dark clouds where cold dust particles cover thin layers of ice,” he added.

Scientists have shown for the first time that methylamine, the type of glycine precursor discovered in the coma of comet 67P, can be formed.