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A new experience could finally help answer the question of how life began on Earth.
The researchers recreated interstellar ice grains coated with carbon dioxide and water – and discovered that, under the conditions of space, they could be an essential part of life.
They say their research provides "convincing new evidence". It has been discovered that the essential component of life is generated in outer space and delivered to Earth over its first billion years by meteorites or comets.
Researchers at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, in collaboration with their French and Taiwanese colleagues, used an ultra-vacuum chamber cooled to 5 K (-450 ° F) in the WM Keck Research Laboratory in astrochemistry at UH Manoa to recreate the icy kernels.
They discovered that when exposed to ionizing radiation in the form of high-energy electrons to simulate cosmic rays in space, multiple phosphorus oxoacids, such as phosphoric acid and diphosphoric acid, were synthesized.
"On Earth, phosphine is deadly to living things," said Andrew Turner, graduate student of UH Manoa, today an assistant professor at Pikeville University, senior author of the journal.
"But in the interstellar medium, an exotic phosphine chemistry can promote rare chemical reaction pathways to initiate the formation of very useful molecules, such as phosphorus oxoacids, that could eventually trigger the molecular evolution of life." as we know it. "
The phosphorus compounds were then incorporated into biomolecules found in cells in living beings on Earth.
Advanced research is described in "Interstellar Synthesis of Phosphorus Oxo Acids," written by Andrew Turner, graduate student at UH Manoa, currently an assistant professor at Pikeville University, and Ralf Kaiser, professor of chemistry at UH Manoa, in the September issue of Nature Communications.
According to the study, phosphates and diphosphoric acid are two essential elements for these building blocks in molecular biology.
They are the main constituents of the chromosomes, carriers of the genetic information in which the DNA is located.
With phospholipids in cell membranes and adenosine triphosphate, which serve as energetic vectors in cells, they form a self-replicating material present in all living organisms.
Kaiser added: "The phosphorus oxoacids detected in our experiments by the combination of sophisticated analyzes involving lasers, coupled with mass spectrometers and gas chromatographs, could also have been formed in the past. comets ice such as 67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which contains phosphorus. source supposed to come from phosphine. & # 39;
"When delivered to Earth by meteorites or comets, these phosphorus oxoacids may have been available for the prebiotic chemistry of the Earth's phosphorus," the team said.
"This is why it is essential to understand the easy synthesis of these oxoacids to unravel the origin of water-soluble prebiotic phosphorus compounds and how they could have been incorporated into organisms not only on Earth but also potentially in our universe. '
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