Key To Life Before Its Origin On Earth May Have Been Discovered

Key To Life Before Its Origin On Earth May Have Been Discovered

www.sciencedaily.com

An important discovery has been made with respect to the mystery of "handedness" in biomolecules. Researchers led by Sandra Pizzarello, a research professor at Arizona State University, found that some of the possible abiotic precursors to the origin of life on Earth have been shown to carry "handedness" in a larger number than previously thought.

Pizzarello, in ASU's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, worked with Yongsong Huang and Marcelo Alexandre, of Brown University, in studying the organic materials of a special group of meteorites...

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[edit on 4-3-2008 by grover]


[edit on 4/3/2008 by khunmoon]

Well this is certainly interesting. I would not have thought that handedness would go so far back. It will be interesting as to what else these studies also reveal.

www.sciencedaily.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by grover


indeed,what is also interesting is that all these amino acids would have been produced by the materials left over from the sun that exploded and created the materials for our sun,the planets, kuper belt,comets etc.now is there anything special about such a sun and its leftover materials in that regards?,do all or the majority of population 1 stars create the conditions for such amino acids in thier left overs?,i believe the answer is probably yes!.

to me this is a huge indicator basic life is common throughout the universe.and what about life that isnt based upon amino acids?.

Am I wrong or this is really a cheap talk of a scientist looking for some acknowledgment...

He's just presenting is idea using a different flavor of Oparin's theory of how basic organic molecules are formed.

You don't need a meteorite. Millions of years will do the trick.

Put some methane, heat and other molecules and you'll have basic amino acids.

If you have amino acids you'll eventually have proteins. If you have proteins...

Sorry, I see nothing new here.

Right and Left "handedness" in chemistry is called chirality and its origin has yet to be determined.
wikipedia entry

This is my first post!