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Biotech NASA

NASA Ames Reproduces the Building Blocks of Life In Laboratory 135

Posted by samzenpus from the build-it-yourself dept.
hypnosec writes "Scientists at NASA's Ames Research Center have reproduced non-biologically the three basic components of life found in both DNA and RNA — uracil, cytosine, and thymine. For their experiment scientists deposited an ice sample containing pyrimidine — a ring-shaped molecule made up of carbon and nitrogen — on a cold substrate in a chamber with space-like conditions such as very high vacuum, extremely low temperatures, and irradiated the sample with high-energy ultraviolet photons from a hydrogen lamp. Researchers discovered that such an arrangement produces these essential ingredients of life. "We have demonstrated for the first time that we can make uracil, cytosine, and thymine, all three components of RNA and DNA, non-biologically in a laboratory under conditions found in space," said Michel Nuevo, research scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California. "We are showing that these laboratory processes, which simulate conditions in outer space, can make several fundamental building blocks used by living organisms on Earth."
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NASA Ames Reproduces the Building Blocks of Life In Laboratory More

NASA Ames Reproduces the Building Blocks of Life In Laboratory

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  • SETI found nothing .. Maybe an alien civilization is in it's dark ages .. couple of hundred years away from inventing the radio.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by readin ( 838620 )

      SETI found nothing .. Maybe an alien civilization is in it's dark ages .. couple of hundred years away from inventing the radio.

      That is a very real possibility. Or maybe the aliens aren't civilized or even intelligent. Or maybe they're in one of the trillions upon trillions of places SETI hasn't had a chance to look yet. Or maybe they're using transmission frequencies SETI isn't checking, or the transmissions have been wave shifted out of SETI's range. Or perhaps SETI just didn't recognize the signals received.

      The fact that SETI has found nothing tells us practically nothing about whether there is life out there. God may hav

      • The absence of data is not data.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Rei ( 128717 )

        God may have created life (directly or indirectly) all over the universe.

        True, we know that there is nowhere in the universe that His noodly appendages doesn't grace.

        • God may have created life (directly or indirectly) all over the universe.

          True, we know that there is nowhere in the universe that His noodly appendages doesn't grace.

          Christianity is crazy sometimes. Jesus obviously turned water into wine, yet we have Southern Baptist churches that will swear on a stack of Bibles that drinking is a sin.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Gr8Apes ( 679165 )

          God may have created life (directly or indirectly) all over the universe.

          True, we know that there is nowhere in the universe that His noodly appendages doesn't grace.

          And although being omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, requires a human to find, judge, and act on his will. Guess noodly appendages can't wreak wrath anymore.

      • I hope nobody already posted this
        http://xkcd.com/638/ [xkcd.com]

    • If an exact clone of our civilization were in the very closest star system, SETI would not have been able to detect that either. Our radio signals aren't strong enough for us to detect beyond a light year, and are becoming even fainter as we get more efficient.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by itzly ( 3699663 )

      Not surprising that SETI found nothing. Typical simple radio/TV/radar signals are too weak and will get drowned out by background noise at distances greater than 1 lightyear. The only way we could detect transmissions from planets further away is when they would send a high powered radio signal directly in our direction. The chance that they would do this at exactly the same time as we were listening in their direction is virtually zero.

      Modern modulation techniques make detection of radio transmissions eve

    • Well...yes...and also maybe it's so far away that, at the speed of light, its electromagnetic calling card hasn't reached us yet...or isn't strong enough...or we aren't looking at the right spot in the sky...the odds of our detecting a signal are incredibly long.

    • SETI is only looking at radio waves around their silly "water hole" frequencies. I wouldn't attempt comm with another star system that way, what self-respecting engineer would? Optical SETI makes much more sense

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      FYI. It's = it (i/ha)s.

  • Panspermia

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by symes ( 835608 )

      Indeed. But isn't panspermia more about extremophiles surviving space rather than just the building blocks of life? Whatever the theory, it makes exploring comets and similar bodies even more interesting. I think this is first interesting space story for some time.

  • I reproduced the building blocks of life in a laboratory once, it was awesome but kind of messy and awkward afterwards for a while but we got over it and now we are "just friends" I regret nothing. Now is the time to fight for COMMUNISM, the only road to womens liberation.

  • Space (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward

    That is awesome. Scientist were trying to make those chemicals in conditions resembling primordial earth but it actually works in space. But...what how do you get the pyrimidine ? Can you make that in space from other more basic molecules and under what conditions?

    • Why, you get the pyramidine from a chemical supply house. So life = wildly conjectured primordial environment + chemical supply house.

    • Re:Space (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 05, 2015 @04:15AM (#49187041)

      We have already found that Pyrimidine occurs naturally in space:
      http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murchison_meteorite

    • Re:Space (Score:5, Informative)

      by Rei ( 128717 ) on Thursday March 05, 2015 @05:20AM (#49187263) Homepage

      I don't think this is at all special. There have been tons of space-matter-abiogenesis experiments that have been done, with similar results. For example, it's been shown that Titan's atmosphere can produce at least 16 amino acids [sciencedirect.com] and all five nucleotide bases [google.is], and we've already detected organic molecules over 10000 daltons [ucl.ac.uk] there.

      Nature likes to produce rather complex mixtures of organic chemicals without any help from life, nobody should doubt this any more, there's been way too much evidence that it happens. Nature is more than happy to continously rain down vast amounts of varied, complex organics given the right situation, providing both potential organic catalysts to develop into early life and "food" that they can scavenge. The question that needs to be answered next is, from a random diverse mix of organics, how does a hypercycle get started, wherein some chemicals / mixtures of chemicals / families of chemicals begin to encourage the creation of more chemicals "like" them, increasing the odds that there will be more produced of whatever is needed to keep the cycle going. Once you get to that point, you have the potential for evolution to take hold - first by a simple race to produce the most exact copies of the most efficiently-catalyzing chemicals and the poisoning of competing chemicals, up to the development of membranes to provide defense/hoarde resources/survive adverse situations/etc (the first "ur-cells").

      • How the heck is this post informative. RTFA. The article is showing that life could begin in space, that it is not tied to a planet. This does not conclusively prove that life on earth began in space but it shows the the seeds of life can begin in space and if they find a favorable planet, life can begin there.

        None of this was common sense. None of this was known. It takes research to understand how this works.
  • A Highly Controlled Environment! Suggest lab really is "space-like"

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Yes, and the LHC is nothing like the conditions immediately after the Big Bang. What's your point?

    • And we shouldn't make plans for tomorrow, because how can we even know there will be a tomorrow? After all, today and all days prior are not at all "tomorrow-like".

  • They failed, however, to make the fourth basic ingredient for life... pizza.

  • Shouldn't it be called the Google Ames Research Center?

  • Uracil and thymine not found in both DNA and RNA. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Meriahven ( 1154311 ) on Thursday March 05, 2015 @01:38AM (#49186557)

    ... the three basic components of life found in both DNA and RNA -- uracil, cytosine, and thymine.

    The three components present in both DNA and RNA are cytosine, guanine and adenine. Uracil is only present in RNA, and thymine only in DNA.

  • Did they have Gil Gerrard ejaculate in it?

    Bonus points if you get the reference.

  • oops (Score:4, Insightful)

    by spongman ( 182339 ) on Thursday March 05, 2015 @03:02AM (#49186819)

    *pop*

    there goes another gap...

  • I find the interesting part is "conditions found in space".

    Because then life would likely not have been seeded on a some planet as a rare event. Rather, because the components could be be scattered all over, and life could develop all over the place, some planets may even have been successfully seeded repeatedly.

    And there may well be extremophiles on Mars that are completely unrelated to life on Earth, as might well be on/in other planets and moons in our solar system.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rei ( 128717 )

      Judging from our sample size of one on what sort of conditions life can thrive in, and a couple datapoints on where it doesn't seem to, I think we haven't the foggiest of clues where we're actually likely to find life. There seems to be this presumption among many that "where we find liquid water we should find life, and where we don't find liquid water we shouldn't". I think that's totally logically indefensible. We have no bloody clue whether water-based life is a common or rare occurrence, nor whether no

      • Not to mention that, when the public hears "alien life", they think of intelligent creatures or, at the very least, something the size of a house cat running around the planet's surface. However, life on other planets could still be bacteria-sized. Even if it wasn't a big life form, finding single celled alien life would be a huge discovery.

      • Somebody failed biology.
  • I think they forgot the whole gamma radiation bit. Last time I checked NASA said this is how they know they are not seeding mars with life because space radiation is so high energy that it sterilizes the entire spacecraft (Also a bit dubious but in space you will quickly get many many Sv of radiation which in a very short period of time is enough radiation to completely kill anything living or even organic in nature). So I'm not seeing how you get UV light into a very very thick lead alternating with a soft
    • I also like that they say they hope it might survive long enough to be entombed in space while still ignoring the fact that the gamma radiation is going to be with the UV radiation and will screw up the reaction long before the chemical even forms. What kind of direct exposed surface in space has only UV radiation with no gamma or x-rays.

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