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NASA Reproduces a Building Block of Life In the Lab
xp65 writes "NASA scientists studying the origin of life have reproduced uracil, a key component of our hereditary material, in the laboratory. They discovered that an ice sample containing pyrimidine exposed to ultraviolet radiation under space-like conditions produces this essential ingredient of life. 'We have demonstrated for the first time that we can make uracil, a component of RNA, non-biologically in a laboratory under conditions found in space,' said Michel Nuevo, research scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. 'We are showing that these laboratory processes, which simulate occurrences in outer space, can make a fundamental building block used by living organisms on Earth.'"
How does this fit in to NASA's mission of "Need Another Seven Astronauts"?
I mean its cool and all, but I'm not sure I see where this is going. Can someone enlighten me?
say... 6000 years ago or so?
....everybody knows the basic building blocks of life were not made. They just happened by random chance. Life and energy sprang from the absence of life and energy. It just makes sense.
Wasn't that the secret ingredient that made Sucrets sooth sore throats 27% faster? Or Pampers 14% drier? Or Lucky Strikes the choice of five out of six doctors surveyed?
But seriously . . . cool.
If only because the Discovery Institute will have to scrap another set of creationist text books.
Where's the "!urine" tag on this one? Please, somebody think of the drunken graduate students who might read this story and decide to reproduce the results.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
I have a feeling that this will lead to the speculation that Earth was therefore seeded with fundamental biomolecules from space and this paved the way for life to begin on Earth. I hope people don't jump to this conclusion too quickly. Personally, I find it unlikely and think there is a more likely interpretation, which I will get to in a moment. The reason this is unlikely is that just having biomolecules is not enough to start life processes. Especially in the time frame when life is hypothesized to have originated (~3.8Gya), as the surface of the Earth was completely covered by ocean at that time, and any seeding of organic molecules from external sources runs into the concentration problem: the problem of getting enough of the right molecules in the right place with the right concentration and the right inputs of energy and raw materials for biochemistry to begin. Any such seeding from external sources would end up very dilute, and biomolecules would likely break down before they could be gathered in sufficient concentrations.
Personally, one possible interpretation which I prefer is that these findings (and similar ones of finding amino acids in comets and such) indicate that organic biomolecules are fairly common and will form anywhere you have C, O, H, N, S, etc and energy. Not only would this indicate that biomolecules could form fairly easily on Earth, but that they are common in the universe, and organic life may arise just about anywhere you have an input of energy and raw materials and a way of concentrating those molecules so they will react and form self-organizing and self-replicating biochemistry.
My current favorite hypothesis about the origins of life on Earth are those championed by Martin and Russell. They hypothesize that life on Earth began and alkaline hydrothermal vents in the ocean, around which porous rocks of iron and nickel sulfide would form semi-permeable cell-like compartments in which basic organic molecules formed by the geochemistry of the vent could concentrate and react with each other. Raw materials would be constantly input from the vent, and there would be a constant energy gradient in the form of heat, pH, and proton-motive force. This neatly solves several problems of many hypotheses of abiogenesis: the energy problems, the raw materials problem, and the concentration problem to name a few. They outline the overall picture of going from geochemistry to biochemistry to prokaryotes to eukaryotes in this 2003 paper:
On the origins of cells: a hypothesis for the evolutionary transitions from abiotic geochemistry to chemoautotrophic prokaryotes, and from prokaryotes to nucleated cells - Martin and Russell, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B 29 January 2003 vol. 358 no. 1429 59-85
They further clarify the possible pathways for a shift from geochemistry to biochemistry in this 2006 paper:
On the origin of biochemistry at an alkaline hydrothermal vent - Martin and Russell, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 29 October 2007 vol. 362 no. 1486 1887-1926
A search for either of those followed by clicking on the "Cited By" link on Google Scholar will yield many papers, including some actual experiments supporting them, which expand and clarify these hypotheses. Definitely worth a read if you are interested in the possible origins of life on Earth, as well as perhaps some ideas of what to look for when looking for life elsewhere.
Anyway, point being, this is fantastic work by NASA, and an excellent example of showing that these molecules can form naturally. Just be careful about drawing any definite conclusions from them other than the simple conclusion that Uracil can form in these natural conditions, and possibly or probably others.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
I gotta a sack full of building blocks. Funny, every time I empty it out, it just refills in about 30 minutes.. ready for another go. So, have your fun with your methane and sulfuric acids and lightning bolts (give my creature..LIIIIIFE!) I'm gonna make my babies the way god intended.
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Forming uracil out of a pyrimidine isn't that impressive. "Building block of life" my ass. Show me more.
Now we just need to create god in a lab.
The conversion from pyrimidine to uracil isn't a particularly complicated one. It's not hard to convince people, if only by considering the similarity if the molecular structures, the this sort of transition would have over geologic periods of time.
I'd be much more interested in them explaining the ring closure and double bond formations in the creation of pyrimidine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller-Urey_experiment
You're making a very common error in understanding about what constitutes a scientific fact.
Evolution -is- a fact; evolution has been observed and tested and met the criteria of a fact, just as gravity is a fact. The number of scientific papers where evolution as fact has been observed number in the hundred thousand or millions.
This extraordinary body of evidence consists of numerous tests of evolution, and easily fulfills any common definition of fact.
Evolution is also a theory, in the scientific sense-- which means that it is a broadly applicable set of principles that help explain nature.
Much has been written regarding this; a little use of the 'ol google will provide much more to show you wrong.
What is life, apart from very complex chemistry? If you belief there is some "magical" ingredient (something like Élan Vital), then you're going to have problems imagining life coming from complex chemical interactions alone - who gets to put the "magic" in? :-)
Personally, I like this answer from the first of the two papers I linked above: a very simple definition of a living system might be: compartments separated from their surroundings that spontaneously multiply with energy gleaned through self-contained, thermodynamically favourable redox reactions. (Martin and Russell, 2003)
It's not just complex chemistry. It is self-organizing, self-contained complex chemistry. The standard biological definition of "life" requires the following 7 characteristics:
1.) organization - in which the cell is the fundamental unit of organization. The self contained compartments from the above definition.
2.) metabolism - both anabolism and catabolism
3.) homeostasis - maintaining its own internal balance
4.) growth - defined as "anabolism > catabolism"
5.) response to stimuli - very wide open definition, could be as simple as an enzyme changing conformation in the presence of a substrate
6.) adaptation - changing to fit ones surroundings, both in the sense of acclimation and evolution
7.) be the product of reproduction - this used to be "be able to reproduce" but it would be nonsense to argue that a mule is not alive.
For a very good look at what it takes to be a living cell, I recommend this paper for a fascinating read:
Molecules into Cells: Specifying Spatial Architecture - Harold, Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews, December 2005, p. 544-564, Vol. 69, No. 4
Anyway, for those following along, these ideas are what biologists are talking when they talk about life and the formation of life. (Not disagreeing with the parent post... simply clarifying, expanding, and explaining). :)
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
There's a committed portion of the US population who don't need to "head..towards understanding the origins of life" because they are absolutely certain that they know exactly how life came about because some Bronze Age scroll tells them so. They're not going to take kindly to anything that could challenge their certainty.
Actually, you are totally wrong with this one. The very idea that man can create life would bolster, in their mind, that an intelligent being did in fact make all life. It's somewhat difficult to argue against the creation of life by intelligent means, when everyone will be able to dial up a new form of life with their cell phones at some point.
Christianity has a gnostic influence: there is that element that we all have it within us to be a God, if we only could unlock the secrets, and part of Christ's mission was to share them. It's that "with faith, man could move mountains", quote from Christ, and the idea that people could work miracles as God does because we are in his image. So, things like ESP, enhanced mind powers, exotic research into the origins of life, and yes, even funding for exotic physics, can and does certainly interest the right wing.
Look at which political parties actually fund advanced sciences. Sure, Democrats are in there with stem cells, but its Republicans that have, as of late, come through with money for laser research, tried to build a super conducting super collider, want to research new nuclear stuff, put the idea of building a permanent man in space. There are religious values driving both. Democrats would prefer to spend money on more basic, earthbound problems, and always wrestle with killing research and exploration to feed the poor, but Republicans, well, don't have that conflict.
This is my sig.
The bible belt is becoming more influential because it has more money. Northern liberals have been foolishly dismissing the bible belt as stupid now for 50 years and really at their own peril, for, while they have done so, the bible belt has utterly stacked the deck of American commercial policy to its advantage. The bible belt needs protectionist food, and free trade goods, so it can import cheap tools and labors to sell crops to a captive market, and lo, what is American trade policy? Gee... we write GM bailout size checks to American farmers every year and no one complains, because the bible belt has us convinced that this glaring exception to the free trade they advocate is not an exception at all.
This is my sig.
religion answers why
science can never answer why as a simple consequence of what science is
religion can never answer how as a simple consequence of what religion is
as soon as you get those two strands of thought separated in your mind, you notice that science and religion never meet, and there is no conflict even possible
therefore, anyone who sees any conflict between science and religion simply doesn't understand the definition of science and/or religion
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If you subscribe to the RNA world hypothesis this isn't that much of hot news - at least to me. There was a paper in nature earlier this year where a group of scientists managed to produce uracil, but that wasn't the main point. They also managed to produce more molecules and gave some good arguments for a RNA world. This is not just a repetition of the Miller-Experiment, as some poster suggested. Saying that is basically saying that cars build on assembly lines today are just a repetition of the production of the T-Model...
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_world_hypothesis
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v459/n7244/full/nature08013.html (abstract only, FA requires a subscription)
Oh, let's get absurd.
God created the world. She did this by creating a universe that would create men by carefully constructing a dispersion of matter and energy and physical laws at 10^-42th seconds into the Big Bang. Genesis is allegory and an absurd perversion of an oral history that's suspect at best. Because He's 32 dimensional, to Her these things happen in the local nexus of a particular interpretation of a poem that's an allegory for a much more beautiful and tragic construct than our lives could ever be. The fact that our universe exists at all is due to a peculiar ambiguity of two terms, which imply either the story Oedipus Rex, or the flavor of peanut butter mixed with arsenic and the subjective nature of the interpretation is part of the art.
Unfortunately for you and me, the end purpose of this endeavor is to create a crystalline intelligence with the subtlety to transcend its corporeal existence and bring about the end of the being divine that imagined it into being, which event will occur outside of our light cone some 30 billion years from now. We are merely the by-blow of a divine suicide attempt.
Ok, now disprove that.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Boys, we have witnessed biochemists lay a stepping stone on the path of Truth.
Carry carrion, garrion.
Thats great, but its nothing compared to what John Sutherland is doing
http://www.chemistry.manchester.ac.uk/aboutus/staff/showprofile.php?id=390
Terrific, scientists can duplicate something that has been going on elsewhere in the universe for gajillions of years. WHERE IS MY JET PACK?
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
A nice distinction I heard was that a theory must be testable. Creationism is not testable because "We should not test God" and even if any test comes out negative "God didn't want to play ball". This gives it zero predictive power making it useless as a theory.
No reason to call home.
The real "factory of life" that needs to be created abiogenically is the ribosome. And uracil is to a ribosome what a matchbox car is to the USS enterprise. It's a necessary step, yes, but the "life forms" that could be created, even using all 5 bases (4 for DNA, 1 extra for RNA) would not be considered to be alive.
Anything considered alive has 7 basic properties :
-> homeostasis : able to maintain a constant internal environment under differing external circumstances (e.g. constant water pressure independant of temperature)
-> organisation
-> metabolism : it must "eat", make parts of the external environment into a functional part of itself
-> growth : it must (be capable of) increasing in size.
-> adaptation : it must evolve
-> response to stimuli
-> reproduction
All 5 bases would (just barely) cover "reproduction" in the above definition. They wouldn't even be as advanced as viruses (and we can artificially create viruses).
So as I said, nice discovery. But we're trying to build the USS enterprise and this "great news" is that we've finally succeeded in finding a possible procedure to construct a tiny matchbox car.
As an Anonymous Coward mentioned down below, the chemistry of oxidising pyrimidine to uracil is utterly trivial. No chemist would be even slightly surprised that it happens after illumination by UV light. This brings us no closer to understanding the origins of life than we were 100 years ago.
I was thinking the same thing. Converting Pyrimidine to Uracil is simply adding a few oxygen atoms in the right places. Now if they only got uracil (or at least a significant majority) as a product that would be something. It's like shooting red paintballs at a target, followed by yellow paintballs and then being amazed that you see a lot of orange!
They can make their own ice sample containing pyrimidine by commanding it into existence from nothingness.
who try to build perpetual motion machines. this doesn't mean they should be seriously considered or considered part of the definition of what science is
the same observation applies to certain "religious" folk
any "how" in the bible is to be taken figuratively not literally. of course there are some who take it literally. these are fools, not people you should point at as valid representatitives of a religion. of course they posit themselves as that, of course there will be fools who follow them. just like there are "scientists" who investigate the paranormal, and consider themselves to be valid scientists, and people believe them. do such quacks deserve to be valid representatives of science in your mind? if no, then you can't put forth religious minded fools to be valid representatives of religion either
i delineated the difference between science and religion successfully. i then said there exist fools who don't understand that delineation. don't point at those same fools as a disproof of my point. my point remains sound, the existence of those fools does not disprove my point
the existence of idiots in this world proves nothing. if i defined the socratic method, and then a fool said the socratic method was a method for playing blackjack, does the existence of this fool disprove, slander, invalidate or in any other way say anything useful about the socratic method? no, it merely proves there exist people in this world who are ignorant, and who bear no value for coherently defining what certain concepts actually mean
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
We've been making test tube babies for well over 20 years, and artificial insemination for way longer than that. And not only is the Catholic church still not fine with it, they're probably even less fine with than they were, say, in the 70's. Color me unconvinced that they'll be changing their minds any time soon.
It always amazes me that people are in any way surprised that the molecules used by life on Earth turn out to be easy to form, either on Earth itself or in space. It would be far more surprising and interesting if life on Earth involved molecules that are really hard to make under normal conditions.
However, this research does demonstrate that these molecules can form in space, which may indicate that they are also common across the universe, not just due to local conditions that held on the early Earth. Which in turn, lends credence to the notion that if life has arisen elsewhere in the universe, we may expect it to be made of similar stuff to ourselves.
that the world is not full of fools and liars?
religious thought is a valid discipline. it answers questions like "why should i get out bed in the morning" "what should i do with my life" etc. questions of intent, purpose, desire. questions that science has nothing to do with, and visa versa
the existence of vast reams of drek that calls itself religion or science and is neither: there are no perfect authorities on anything in this world. you must use your mind, and verify what someone professes to you. in fact, the moment some tells you their judgment is infallible and their authority unquestionable, on either science or religion, is the exact moment you should never trust them and believe everything they say is a lie. we all need healthy bullshit meters to survive this world
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Even such a simple thing as why a ball falls when you drop it cannot be answered by science. A simple answer like "Gravity" describes the phenomenon, but does not truly explain why it occurs. All you have done is explain one thing in terms of another. This moves the question: Why does the ball fall? Because gravity makes it.
Why does gravity do that?
As most small children have discovered, it is great fun to simply continue asking "and why does that happen?" whenever anything scientific is being explained. Usually only a few levels of recursion are required before the answer essentially boils down to "we don't have a clue why it does that, we just know the data says it does that".
Considering the paper shows that uracil could occur in space (I'd assume that there is existing research showing it can form on a planet naturally) I don't think you're attacking the right target.
You seem to be taking this finding as being as far as abiogenesis research has come, which is as far as I can tell, incorrect by a large margin. There is still much to be worked out, but you might be surprised at how far along we currently are :-)
I forgot to use the prview buttton. The first line was supposed to be in italics, a quote of the parent post. My post might be pretty confusing if that first line is read as if it were my own opening statement.
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