Protein Discovered Inside a Meteorite 95
A team of researchers from Plex Corporation, Bruker Scientific LLC and Harvard University has found evidence of a protein inside of a meteorite. They have written a paper describing their findings and have uploaded it to the arXiv preprint server. Phys.Org reports: In this new effort, the researchers have discovered a protein called hemolithin inside of a meteorite that was found in Algeria back in 1990. The hemolithin protein found by the researchers was a small one, and was made up mostly of glycine, and amino acids. It also had oxygen, lithium and iron atoms at its ends -- an arrangement never seen before. The team's paper has not yet been peer reviewed, but once the findings are confirmed, their discovery will add another piece to the puzzle that surrounds the development of life on Earth. Proteins are considered to be essential building blocks for the development of living things, and finding one on a meteorite bolsters theories that suggest either life, or something very close to it, came to Earth from elsewhere in space.
Proteins are considered by chemists to be quite complex, which means a lot of things would have to happen by chance for protein formation. For hemolithin to have formed naturally in the configuration found would require glycine to form first, perhaps on the surface of grains of space dust. After that, heat by way of molecular clouds might have induced units of glycine to begin linking into polymer chains, which at some point, could evolve into fully formed proteins. The researchers note that the atom groupings on the tips of the protein form an iron oxide that has been seen in prior research to absorb photons -- a means of splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen, thereby producing an energy source that would also be necessary for the development of life.
Proteins are considered by chemists to be quite complex, which means a lot of things would have to happen by chance for protein formation. For hemolithin to have formed naturally in the configuration found would require glycine to form first, perhaps on the surface of grains of space dust. After that, heat by way of molecular clouds might have induced units of glycine to begin linking into polymer chains, which at some point, could evolve into fully formed proteins. The researchers note that the atom groupings on the tips of the protein form an iron oxide that has been seen in prior research to absorb photons -- a means of splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen, thereby producing an energy source that would also be necessary for the development of life.
How is this news? (Score:3, Informative)
They have been finding various amino acids in meteorites for a very long time, almost as long as anyone knew what to look for. They start chains spontaneously. It seems pretty obvious that a complete protein could form, it's not too mysterious. or surprising.
Re:How is this news? (Score:5, Interesting)
We have found evidence for amino acids and ribose for instance in many water rich environments throughout the Solar system. Maybe van 't Hoffs rule, stating that an increase of the temperature of 10 K increases the speed of chemical reaction by a factor of 2 to 3, has prevented Life to form on places like Saturn's moon Titan or Jupiter's Moon Europa, as they will need about 10,000 times longer for complex chemical structures to form, being 100 K colder than Earth. But precursors for Life do exists everywhere.
Undersea geothermal vents Hofts rule? (Score:2)
Ubiquitous?
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Re:How is this news? (Score:5, Funny)
People find carbon inside a meteorite
Brett: "Meh, carbon isn't exactly rare in the Universe."
People find amino acids inside a meteorite
Brett: "So? Plenty of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen out there."
People find proteins inside a meteorite
Brett: "How is this news? They have been finding various amino acids in meteorites for a very long time."
People find prions inside a meteorite
Brett: "Big deal. What's a prion, but a clump of protein molecules?"
People find virus particles inside a meteorite
Brett: "Whatever. It's not like viruses are alive."
People find bacteria inside a meteorite
Brett: dies of Andromeda Strain, along with the rest of us
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The Andromeda Strain "lifeform" wasn't really a bacteria. It was crystalline, and not really classifiable as bacteria. /pedant
Damn good movie - as entertainment, it was reasonably accurate with the science.
Meanwhile, my fellow Australians are clearing the supermarkets of toilet paper. I can't fault their choice, but I'd prefer to stock up on canned goods. I can always wipe my arse with murdoch's product.
I wonder how many microbiologists have been told of a 'wildfire' in the last few days?
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Re:How is this news? (Score:4, Funny)
Meanwhile, my fellow Australians are clearing the supermarkets of toilet paper. I can't fault their choice, but I'd prefer to stock up on canned goods. I can always wipe my arse with murdoch's product.
I submit to you the reason they are stocking up on toilet paper is exactly because they are stocking up on canned goods.
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I prefer Turner's products myself.
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Do you want colon cancer, because that's how you get colon cancer. ;)
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Do they know the origins of this particular meteor, and how old it and its protein is?
I ask because years ago, a scientist generated a controversy when he claimed a meteor, determined to come from Mars, contained evidence for life on Mars. Since then, I've been curious about such possibilities.
Another possibility not mentioned is that organic material could have been made and spread during the formation and early development of the solar system, or maybe even a subsequent phase or phase
And were they eating lunch when they found it? (Score:2)
> Do they know the origins of this particular meteor, and how old it and its protein is?
I'm curious if by chance they were eating lunch when they found this protein molecule. Does the molecule resemble the protein in the chicken sandwich they were holding at the time?
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No. It doesn't really resemble proteins from life on earth.
From TFA: "The hemolithin protein found by the researchers was a small one, and was made up mostly of glycine, and amino acids. It also had oxygen, lithium and iron atoms at its ends—an arrangement never seen before."
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Just in (03/05/2020)
Thiophenes, an organic compound found on Earth, has now been discovered on Mars by the Curiosity Rover. Thiophenes is associated with life on this planet, but on Mars, meh. Scientists want more evidence before making such a claim.
https://phys.org/news/2020-03-molecules-curiosity-rover-early-life.html [phys.org]
--
C'est La Vie
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Incidentally, the only people associating this discovery with life are commentators. That claim isn't in the paper because the people performing this study are not making it.
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Just from the name, I don't think that thiophenes are proteins of any sort.
Yeah, and thiophenes wasn't found in a meteor either. /. discussion, however cheap and cheesy, was about the possible association of these these 'organic molecules' with life. Panspermia was mentioned by me and others, even once dismissively. Nonetheless, all of this points to the fact that the conversation diverged from being exclusively about proteins and meteors.
Both articles referenced by BeauHD and me are talking about extraterrestrial organic material. Much of the
Incidentally, the only people associating this discovery with life are commentators. That claim isn't in the paper because the people performing this study are not making it.
Not in what I'm reading. Dirk Schul
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The paucity of evidence for the past existence of life on Mars is certainly not overwhelming me with it's convincingness. The timing is also looking bad and getting worse - if the window was ever open, it got slammed shut pretty hard and pretty early.
Getting an MS capable of giving us some delta-C-13 and delta-S-34 values would be good. I'm just wondering what they'd use for ca
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> Do they know the origins of this particular meteor, and how old it and its protein is?
I'm curious if by chance they were eating lunch when they found this protein molecule. Does the molecule resemble the protein in the chicken sandwich they were holding at the time?
Yeah, it could happen. Proteins do a lot of work with DNA replication, moving molecules, providing structure, catalyzing metabolic reactions and responding to stimuli.
So, one day a scientist is screwing around with a meteor over lunch, when suddenly the door slams open and the meteor's pimp is yelling right in his face. Before he can get is pants back on, bam! There's protein all over the place - on the meteor, the pimp, the sandwich...
Heard about it on Snapchat. There's a pic on 4-chan somewhere.
- I d
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How this is news?
They got no clue.
ALL the proteins are made of amino acids and glycine is also one of those.
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It's news because it's interesting. While it's not a groundbreaking paradigm shift, that's hardly the standard for "news." People always assume that a science story has to be about something mysterious or complex but the vast majority of science is neither of those. Oftentimes, as here, it's just about collecting data. Sometimes that data is interesting enough to make it to the front page of /.
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-- Enrico Fermi, about 1952, in the canteen at Los Alamos.
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So, where is everybody?
Those are two pretty big ifs. If you're going to assemble a lot of amino acids into a protein chain abiotically, then it sure as hell is most likely to happen with glycine, because it's the smallest possible amino acid. But that iron-lithium ending (and
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Space proteins? More like meaty-or-ite, am I right?
I'll have some spaghetti with spaceballs, please.
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Man says amazing thing is 'Not a big deal, kinda of obvious' in order to make himself seem smart, news at 11.
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My personal belief, if you care -- (Score:2)
Re:My personal belief, if you care -- (Score:4, Insightful)
then it's turtles all the way down.
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then it's turtles all the way down.
No Turtles came later than the first pre eukaryotic life.
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then it's turtles all the way down.
There is no down in space.
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then it's turtles all the way down.
There is no down in space.
Sure there is; it's simply the direction toward (against?) the sum of the acceleration forces affecting the mass in question
If under acceleration in a spaceship, it will be the same direction that the engines are creating thrust;
If not under acceleration in a spaceship:
- Near to a planetary body, 'down' is most likely to be that planet/moon
- In interplanetary space, or near two or more planetary bodies at a lagrange point, it's likely to be the center of the system (usually a star, but sometimes a black hol
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Down could just be along the axis of your straight body from the head extendi
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Re: My personal belief, if you care -- (Score:1)
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There is no down in space.
Oblig: Down is towards the enemy's gate.
Unless you meant there's no goose-down, which is a conjecture yet to be proven.
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then it's turtles all the way down.
There is no down in space.
THIS! The lack of a clear universal definition of "down" in space is clearly the weak point in this position!
In fact, it is a long-sought holy grail of theoretical physics to reconcile the various valid reference frames in any system with the infinite stack of turtles. Clearly, whoever solves this problem will be a shoe-in for a Nobel prize!
My personal bias is that this problem will be solved by the inherent directionality of turtles. After all, it is a well established fact that turtles are not r
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then it's turtles all the way down.
There is no down in space.
The enemy's gate is down.
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then it's turtles all the way down.
Yes, life may have started elsewhere. With this "elsewhere" probabilities of finding life somewhere change quite a bit. Spontaneous formation of life's building blocks may be improbable during existence of our planet, but not improbable during existence of all possible planets in the history of our galaxy.
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This is the obvious question. To continue that train of thought, even if proteins made it to earth from elsewhere and contributed to life here, that doesn't necessarily mean that meteors are the source of life on earth. Nor does it mean that we wouldn't have life here without extraterrestrial contributions.
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If they can form elsewhere, why not here?
Because it is suck a freak event, it is almost impossible on any one world.
But with maybe a trillion planets in our galaxy alone, the impossible becomes plausible.
Of course, you need to consider the anthropic principle. But is it easier for life to start, or to spread across interstellar space?
Is Biogenesis or Panspermia easier and more common?
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Gilgaron observed:
The article doesn't say, but it would be interesting to see if the protein showed uniform chirality.
Indeed it would. Unfortunately, the the study itself [arxiv.org], upon which the "article" (which, like everything on phys.org, is actually just a press release) is based does not even mention chirality. That's not especially surprising, given the indirect method the researchers used to determine the molecules' structure.
But, you're absolutely right. It would be incredibly important, if it turned out that the molecules in question all rotated polarized light the same direction - especially if it was t
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That's after dissolving the compounds in chloroform/ methanol/ water and drying into microgram spots. Which isn't particularly likely to be preserving of chirality conditions.
But the chemistry itself is surprising enough. A lithium-iron protein is weird enough, and bi-chain proteins are pretty weird too.
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What Orange Tide references is, I believe, the paradoxical framings of creation, or origin, given representation and motif in the creation myths of Eastern religion/philosopy. I believe the phrase emerged from Usenet...
Really? You are right that it has to do with the mythological world turtle [wikipedia.org] popularised in the Discworld Series [wikipedia.org] by Terry Pratchett, but that the phrase 'originated' on Usenet is a claim that would require extraordinary evidence.
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but that the phrase 'originated' on Usenet is a claim that would require extraordinary evidence.
I agree. Extraordinary claim withdrawn. Thank you for the 1983 cite.
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I think Earth was definitely seeded with amino acids or proteins from elsewhere, and that's what kick stated life here.
Why do think this, especially as strong enough of a position to say "definitely"?
Why invoke the more complicated dependency upon extra-terrestrial origin? Not only do you need to invent an actual location for this origin, you also need to figure out how that life made it to our neighborhood early after the initial formation of the earth.
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Sometimes when I feel the exasperation of panspermatologists, I refer to "throwing the dice where they can't be seen" as being equivalent to panspermia, in deference to Einstein's dislike for "playing dice with the universe".
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I think Earth was definitely seeded with amino acids or proteins from elsewhere, and that's what kick stated life here.
The monkey-man has it partly right. But amino acids or proteins are easy, no meteors needed.
The more interesting idea in Panspermia is that all life on earth is descended from space-bugs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
We know that bacteria live in rocks deep underground, and could survive being blasted into space by an asteroid impact, and live dormant for thousands of years in the cold of space. They do need to be deep inside a rock to be protected from radiation in space, not to mention the initial bla
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Reminds me of the "nation-wide serial criminal" whose DNA was found all over Germany. They eventually figured out the cotton swabs where contaminated.
Aside from contamination what are the odds that stuff simply grew on or came from earth? A meteorite impact isn't exactly low-energy and who knows how long it's been on earth before they found it 30 years ago.
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Skepticism is good and helps science to catch errors and correct them. Cynicism is not good as it helps to discredit all scientific endeavors and encourage ignorance.
The replication crisis: 1) has a stronger effect in the social sciences and 2) has overall been positive for science as it has encouraged additional scrutiny and a renewed emphasis on the importance of replication.
Your post is cynical, not skeptical. It's not even good at being cynical: the interesting part of this study is that they found NOVE
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God I hope... (Score:1)
Ancient aliens, what else could it be? (Score:1)
Just wondering... (Score:2)
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Our life is not nearly intelligent enough to be based on even protomolecule v.01, based on almost no information, but my gut feel from earth life and watching the Expanse.
Speaking of, I love that show, and I think it's terrible, not sure how to merge those feelings.
Remnants of Alderaan (Score:1)
So a chuck of Alderaan came from a long time ago and a galaxy far, far away, and landed on Earth.
RIP to the Alderaanian who left that amino acid on the meteor.
Inside a Meteorite (Score:2)
Summary covers one possible process for protein to form in space. But that would seem more plausible for proteins found on the exterior of objects. Alternatively, this meteorite could have been a rock in a pool of pond scum, perhaps on another planet. Which got knocked into space by a large collision.
So the question is: How far could this have traveled? Where might this planet with pools of pond scum lie? And what might that pond scum have evolved into?
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Did you miss this bit when you read the paper?
It may be utterly shocking, but dealing with possible surface contamination is something that meteorite researcher
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Alternatively, this meteorite could have been a rock in a pool of pond scum, perhaps on another planet. Which got knocked into space by a large collision.
Not likely. Meteorites from the Moon are rare, meteorites from Mars are even rarer. And there are 0 meteorites from any other planet or moon. Almost all of the tens of thousands of meteorites can be traced back to fewer than 150 parent bodies (source below).
So the odds that a planet formed, formed life, got hit by an impact, sent a rock to Earth, then the planet disappeared without a trace (orthe than the 1 meteorite) would leave a probability of essentially 0.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=... [google.com]
Protein or polymer? (Score:2)
Is it a protein or a polymer?
If you browse through the paper (PDF) [arxiv.org], you can see the molecule itself.
Glycine has been detected in space as well as the Murchison meteorite and Comet 67P. So its presence, per se, is not a surprise. And it is not a stretch to see it aggregate in a chain.
From what I can see, it is a polymer of glycine and hydroxyglycine, capped at both ends by iron and lithium.
Not sure if that qualifies as a protein, being of a homogeneous chain of just one amino acid (and a variant thereof) ...
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Yeah, proteins are polymers.
But regular polymers are just repetitions of the same molecule.
What makes proteins unique is that they are made of several different molecules, then folded in certain ways to give them the properties they have.
This hemolithin looks more akin to simple polymers than proteins.
It is a meatierite (Score:2)
Enquirer tier post (Score:2)
Getting his rocks off (Score:1)
Protein, great, but ... (Score:1)
?Inside? the meteorite (Score:2)
How did the protein get inside the meteorite in the first place?
Am I to believe that a glob of molten rock wrapped around an organic molecule without destroying it?
The alternative is that there was a crack that allowed chemicals to seep in and form the molecule. If that is the case, wouldn't a more likely explanation be that the proteins formed on Earth?