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Japan asteroid probe finds 23 amino acids, researchers confirm
- garblegarble 4y agoIs the article suggesting that they think these amino acids have survived in space for (over) 4.6 billion years? That's astonishing, I'd have thought that over that stretch of time the background radiation would have broken the atomic bonds
- adrian_b 4y agoThe organic substances can survive billions of years in most meteoroids or asteroids, due to the extremely low temperature. They are perfectly frozen. Most of the ambient radiation is absorbed close to the surface, so the organic substances that are buried even a few mm will not be affected.
- ezconnect 4y agoDoes it mean some of them are lost due to extraction and before testing for them?
- adrian_b 4y agoThe number of amino-acids found has been mentioned in many on-line media, but it is completely meaningless. There exists a huge number of amino-acids, most of them are not made or used by the known living beings and of those made by living beings even fewer are used in proteins. A very large number of random amino-acids have also been found in various meteorites, because they easily form from the most abundant chemical elements in the Universe, H, C, N and O, whenever there is not enough oxygen to oxidize everything else, but among them only about 10 of those used by living beings have been found, i.e. about one half of the amino-acids used in proteins. What would have been interesting to know about the Japanese asteroid probe would have been if, among the many amino-acids found, there have been also the same about 10 amino-acids previously found, or only a part of them, and if there has been found any other amino-acid with biological importance besides those ten. The press release mentions only glutamic acid and valine, 2 simple amino-acids which belong to those 10 about which it is well known that they can easily be synthesized in abiotic conditions.
- rndmind 4y ago> More than 500 naturally occurring amino acids are known [..exist], although only 22 appear in the genetic code. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amino_acid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amino_acid So, the article doesn't list which amino acids were found, except one, glutamic acid. The real question is, which amino acids were found.
- april_22 4y agoIs there the possibility that these amino acids appeared on the asteroid after it landed on earth/during entry through the athmosphere?
- driggs 4y agoHayabusa2 rendezvoused with the asteroid in space ("asteroid", not "meteorite"). The asteroid never entered Earth atmosphere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayabusa2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayabusa2
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> press release mentions only glutamic acid and valine, 2 simple amino-acids which belong to those 10 "Proteinogenic amino acids such as glycine, D,L-a- alanine as well as non-proteinogenic amino acids including b-alanine, D,L-a-aminobutyric acid were identified. The chiral amino acids are present as racemic mixtures (D/L ~ 1), which is indicative of extraterrestrial, non-biological origins." https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2022/pdf/1781.pdf https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2022/pdf/1781.pdf
- adrian_b 4y agoThanks for the link. This is an earlier report about the progress of the chemical analysis of the asteroid samples, at a time when they had identified only 10 amino-acids and when they had not identified yet the glutamic acid and the valine. Unlike in the news report, here the relevant information is present. However the results do not contain any surprise. As expected, there are equal quantities of left-handed and right-handed amino-acids (unlike in living beings) and all the amino-acids are among those simple enough to be synthesized spontaneously, in the absence of life.
- harveywi 4y agoI wonder if this can be used as a meatless protein source.
- throwaway0x7E6 4y ago
- themodelplumber 4y agoI wouldn't be surprised if a namesake health product hits Japanese markets at least. Drink "Amino-purobbu", space de mitsukatta 23 amino acids iri! Actually I would totally try it.
- Sharlin 4y agoWhat? Amino acids from asteroids? At a sweet, sweet price of trillions of €$£ per gram? That’s gonna be one expensive burger. These are just bunches of CHNO atoms. We can synthetize them in any biochem lab easily enough.
- ajross 4y agoProbably, yes, in exactly the same way (though with significantly less nutritive value) that fill dirt or construction rubble can be used as a meatless protein source.
- gus_massa 4y agoShort answer: No Long answer: Ignoring the cost ... Each amino acid has two mirrored versions. We use only one of them, so one half will be wasted. Of the half we use, we don't use all of them, we use like 20+something. Some of the others may be transformed into one of the amino acids we use, but it looks like the found many weird amino acids, so a big chunk will be wasted. Also, some amino acids are more useful and we can't produce some of them, so any mix is not equivalent. A mix produced by blending a cow is more similar to our preferred mix than a mix produced blending plants. The mix in the asteroid is even worse. Bacteria can feed from more strange amino acids, so the bacteria in your guts will be happy and you will produce farts no man has smelt before. [Actually the smell depends on how much sulfur the amino acids have. I'm not sure in this case Anyway, expect diarrhea and other nasty stuff.] Some of the weird amino acids may even be toxic, but let's be optimistic. So, it looks like a bad idea.
- swader999 4y agoSo can we eat these?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- vixen99 4y agoNo but I think HarveyWi might try them on our behalf.
- harveywi 4y agoYes. A robotic space lasso can be used to herd the asteroids in low earth orbit. Next they are ground into a powder, packaged with little parachutes, and yeeted directly to consumers.
- adrian_mrd 4y agoSoylent Space... it's from asteroids, people!
- SketchySeaBeast 4y agoWe're all just stardust, with much of it in our colon.
- minsc_and_boo 4y agoYou could just smash the asteroids into the ground w/o parachutes, saves money on the pulverization steps. Same day shipping.
- criley2 4y agoIt included glutamic acid so all we need to do is refine it to the salt version and bam, space msg
- lovemenot 4y agoMission sponsor: Ajinomoto
- formvoltron 4y agoJapanese find 23 amino acids on space rock, after sneezing on space rock.
- sam-2727 4y agoAnyone have a link to the source journal article? I can't find it.
- y1zhou 4y agoClosest paper I could find is https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abn7850 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abn7850, but it made no mentions to amino acids in the main text or the supplement.
- belter 4y agohttps://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2022/pdf/1781.pdf https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2022/pdf/1781.pdf
- 8bitsrule 4y agoSeems it was published in Proceedings of the Japan Academy, Series B. , and the one in Science is 'a separate study'. Found this abstract: https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/pjab/98/6/98_PJA9806B-01/_article https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/pjab/98/6/98_PJA9806B-0...
- PaulHoule 4y agoThey cooked a sample of Ryuguu and drove off about 15% of its mass, mostly in the form of H2O and CO2. That is, Ryuguu is wetter and more carbon rich than the earth. Iron, Silicon and Aluminum are there in abundance. (Gerard K. O'Neill and many science fiction writers have gotten wrong the idea that you need M-type asteroids to get iron.) Astronauts found high quality hematite ore on the moon. If you wanted to make large solar sails (say to be a sunshade the Earth-Sun L1 point) you would probably de-volatilize materials by using heat and possibly oxygen. It would be ideal to convert hydrocarbons to carbon monoxide so you can do C1 chemistry to make plastics. You have waste CO2 no matter what (it offgases from carbonates and other chemistry) so you will need the same kind of chemistry people are talking about for capturing CO2 and using it as a chemical feedstock. The "metal line" and "stone lines" would reduce the devolatized rock to produce silicon solar cells, electric connections, mirrors, etc. You will make storage tanks from iron, the devolatilization process could be a little awkward because you will need storage tanks to put the gate. The one resource I'm not sure about is nitrogen, which is important for making chemistry work. (Say you want to make a sail out of Kapton instead of Polyethylene.)
- samatman 4y ago> The one resource I'm not sure about is nitrogen Good news! Nitrogen is the amine in amino acid. Nitrogen is likely to be a limiting reagent in a lot of interesting processes in space, finding amino acids is good news but it's not clear how much nitrogen we're talking about.
- PaulHoule 4y agoIn Gundam the O'Neill colonies are less plausible than the giant robots because the huge airspaces require large amounts of inert gases such as nitrogen, argon, helium, or SF6. I find it profoundly annoying that phys.org publishes a story every week or so about how lunar colonists could make oxygen for 'breathing' which is a way to burn out and not fade away unless you have four parts of some other gas.
- worker_person 4y ago
- Barrera 4y ago> A total of 23 types of amino acids were found in asteroid samples brought back by Japan's Hayabusa2 space probe, according to new studies published in the journal Science and elsewhere, shedding further light on the origins of life on Earth. This intersects with a raging debate in Origins of Life research. The Miller-Urey experiment demonstrated the production of amino acids from simple gasses thought the be present in the early Earth atmosphere and energy. The problem is that you can add amino acids into a flask, stir, and not much will happen. You can pump in all the energy you want and all you'll get it tar. Before you can even start to make proteins, which is what makes life, you need enzymes. The trouble with enzymes is that they're, well, proteins. So how do you get the proteins that make proteins in the first place? One line of investigation says that you don't. What happens instead are stepping-stone chemical processes that turn energy from the environment into self-reinforcing cycles that build complex molecules. Over time chemical evolution takes place to produce self-reinforcing systems that make something that's very close to amino acids and/or proteins. We don't know what these processes are, but we can deduce their necessity given the above conundrum. Chemical evolution is a process we observe on the macro scale when, for example, viruses evade vaccine defenses. In other words, finding amino acids just says that the processes that produce amino acids are ubiquitous. This is hardly surprising given the molecular simplicity at play. There's just a handful of atoms and they pop together following well-understood rules. The paths to making amino acids from simpler inputs is short, well-defined, and not entropically disfavored. It can (and does) occur abiotically. Finding enzymes or other complex proteins above statistical background levels on the other hand would be different. That would be a world-changing find because it would be strong evidence of previous life. Even more, you'd be hard-pressed to find any other explanation. But it's not just proteins. Any sufficiently complex molecule found above expected statistical levels due to random reactions would be strong evidence supporting previous life. As an aside, finding enantiomerically-enriched amino acids would also be an important finding for similar reasons. The article doesn't discuss this, though. For a high-level overview of what all of this about, check out Lex Fiedman's interview with Lee Cronin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZecQ64l-gKM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZecQ64l-gKM
- gus_massa 4y agoI agree that the step from simple molecules like amino acids to life is far from clear. A nice candidate is the RNA, because it can have enzymatic properties and also store information and somewhat self copy. More details in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_world
- mrfusion 4y agoHow many of these are essential amino acids though?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]