Quantum Mechanical Tunneling May Explain How Life Appeared on Earth

A new collaborative study from the Friedrich Schiller University Jena and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy have recently discovered a new hint regarding the origin of life. The study utilized data that was gathered from peptides.

Peptides and Amino Acids Forming Life on Earth

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Earth appears on the horizon of the moon, as seen by the crew of the Apollo 15 mission, 1971.

The peptides examined in the research can form on dust even under intense conditions and the extremities present in outer space. The study suggests that these molecules, which are known to be abundant in many types of life, may not have originally existed on our planet. The clues from the research imply that cosmic molecular clouds as the origin of peptides.

Life consists of numerous building blocks that are present in every biological form. Among the factors that build up these blocks are peptides.

Peptides serve as transportation for substances into various functions of the body. Alongside the distribution, peptides are known to form stabilized scaffolds for the cells to accelerate their reaction.

Inside the peptides are amino acids that are compiled into specific forms. The orders of these acids drive the peptides' properties. Although versatile, these molecules could manifest on the planet, leaving experts to suspect that it might have something to offer regarding the origins of life.

Amino acids, sugars, and other nucleobases are already discovered in many meteoroids. With the supposedly Earth-type chemicals being present on the cosmic materials, there could be a chance that a great part of our origin came from space.

However, peptides must first meet special conditions similar to Earth when the individuality of amino acids is forming it.

University of Jena's Laboratory Astrophysics and Cluster Physics Group at Max Planck institute expert Serge Krasnokutski, who authored the study, said in a SciTechDaily report that peptides should be created in the conventional process, water must be included in the equation.

When amino acids combine to construct a chain, one water molecule must be removed each time. Krasnokutski explained that through their quantum chemical calculations, it was revealed that the amino acid glycine could materialize through a chemical precursor known as amino ketene. The common formula requires the precursor to be combined with a water molecule as the first step and remove the water as the next.

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Life From Space to Earth

In the new study, Krasnokutsk analyzed a reaction pathway that could work even under cosmic conditions and with the absence of water.

Krasnokutsk explained that instead of using the limiting formula, their team searched on how the amino ketone molecule formation could be bypassed and form peptides right away.

The novel approach could run under the intense factors present in the cosmic molecular clouds based on their findings. These are hovering across the wide vacuum of space and are composed of ammonia, carbon, and carbon monoxide.

Through an ultra-high vacuum chamber, which serves as the dust particle model, the chemicals we're exposed in negative 263 degrees Celsius of temperature and under one quadrillionth of normal air pressure.

As a result, the peptide polyglycine was formed effortlessly under the circumstances. The cold environment pushed the amino ketone to be reactive and allowed the simple chains of amino acid glycines to form the peptides directly.

According to the authors, one possible reason that may have induced the peptide formation in space is quantum mechanical tunneling. This process requires quantum materials to cross energy barriers through a tunneling effect, all during a certain atom changes its place. The study was published in the journal Nature Astronomy, titled "A pathway to peptides in space through the condensation of atomic carbon."