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Life is Sweet

A controversial theory that sugar-related molecules may have seeded life on earth has been boosted by GC-mass spectrometry studies of meteorites. This space rock arrived on the infant earth around four billion years ago leading to the growth of bacteria that evolved into primitive life forms.

So-called polyhydroxylated compounds (polyols) have been found in carbon-rich asteroid fragments discovered last century in Australia and the United States, by a team from NASA's Ames Research Center. It is concluded that polyols were present on the early earth and therefore, at least available for incorporation into the first forms of life.

The idea of life's ingredients arriving on meteorites gained ground among space scientists after they were found to contain amino acids, the basics of proteins. Additional experiments showed that these acids could be chemically produced in the laboratory by combining methane and ammonia.

The polyols are a family of carbon compounds that comprise sugar, sugar alcohols and sugar acids. Polyols provide the "skeleton" for many other molecules as well as a vital energy source for cells.

The study's samples came from the Murchison meteorite, found near Melbourne, Australia in 1969, and the Murray meteorite located around 1930 on a farm in Oklahoma. Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) was used to ionise and identity the polyols.

The study appears in Nature (December 2001) Volume 414, 879 - 883.

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