The new discovery could be for us the key to the question of whether life could arise elsewhere in the solar system.
Using a new analysis technique, scientists believe they have discovered an extraterrestrial protein hidden inside a meteorite that fell to Earth 30 years ago.
If their results can be reproduced, it will be the first identified protein that did not originate here on Earth.
“This article describes the first protein found in a meteorite,” the researchers wrote in a document uploaded to the arXiv preprint server. Their work has not yet been reviewed, but the implications of this discovery are noteworthy.
Over the past few years, some of the building blocks of life as we know it have been discovered in meteorites. Cyanide, which may play a role in making the molecules needed for life; ribose, a type of sugar found in RNA; and amino acids, organic compounds that combine to form proteins.
Using 'modern' mass spectrometry, they discovered what they believe to be a protein in a meteorite called Acfer 086, found in Algeria in 1990.
While not proof of the existence of extraterrestrial living things, it is the discovery of protein as one of the building blocks of life in the cosmic rock. There are many processes that can produce protein, but as far as we know, life cannot exist without it.
The team not only found the amino acid glycine with a stronger signaling signal than the previous analysis, but also found that it is bound to other elements such as iron and lithium. When they ran simulations to see what was happening, they found that the glycine was not isolated; he was part of the protein.
Researchers call this newly discovered protein hemolitin. Although hemolithin is structurally similar to Earth's proteins, its deuterium isotopes are not the isotopes that occur naturally here on Earth.
However, isotopes are not uncommon in meteorites. In addition, the ratio of deuterium to hydrogen corresponds to long-period comets.
This suggests that the structure they identified as protein is of extraterrestrial origin and may have formed in the proto-solar disk over 4.6 billion years ago.
Similar methods can now be used on other meteorites in which amino acids have been found to see if similar structures can be found.
The study is currently available on arXiv.
Sources: Photo: Navicore / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 3.0
