Sweet outer space: sugars ‘essential to life’ found in meteorites

[Elderberry]

Oil City News by Brendan LaChance on November 21, 2019

On the way to Mars why not make a pit stop at a candy shop in outer space?

NASA says that an international team has recently “found sugars essential to life in meteorites.”

That discovery supports a hypothesis “that chemical reactions in asteroids – the parent bodies of many meteorites – can make some of life’s ingredients.”

“If correct, meteorite bombardment on ancient Earth may have assisted the origin of life with a supply of life’s building blocks,” NASA said on Nov. 18. “The team discovered ribose and other bio-essential sugars including arabinose and xylose in two different meteorites that are rich in carbon, NWA 801 (type CR2) and Murchison (type CM2).”

“Ribose is a crucial component of RNA (ribonucleic acid). In much of modern life, RNA serves as a messenger molecule, copying genetic instructions from the DNA molecule (deoxyribonucleic acid) and delivering them to molecular factories within the cell called ribosomes that read the RNA to build specific proteins needed to carry out life processes.”

More: https://oilcity.news/community/2019/11/21/sweet-outer-space-sugars-essential-to-life-found-in-meteorites5/