Life is sweet: Glycolaldehyde is a monosaccharide sugar and is regarded by astrobiologists as an important marker of possible life, as it can react to form the DNA base ribose.
Credit: Reaction Dynamics Group - University of Hawaii
LONDON: A sugar molecule, linked to the origin of life on Earth, has been found in a distant region of the Milky Way, some 26,000 light years away.
What's more, the sugar was detected drifting through a massive star-forming region of the galaxy, which could be host to life-friendly planets.
"It is the first time glycolaldehyde, a basic sugar, has been detected towards a star forming region where planets that could potentially harbour life may exist," said Serena Viti, an astrophysicist at University College London, in England, and author of a study on the find to be published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Cold and sparse
Glycolaldehyde can react with propenal to form ribose, an important ingredient in RNA and DNA – the basic units of life. The molecule has been detected in deep space before, but only in regions too extreme to nurture life, such as the cold and sparse galactic centre, said Viti.
The researchers located the sugar in a star-forming region, dubbed G31.41+31, using the IRAM radio-telescope in Grenoble, France.
The molecule was detected in similar concentrations to other organic chemicals commonly found in space, raising the possibility that its presence could be more widespread than previously thought.
The region the experts scrutinised is rich in young stars that may be associated with planets, thereby increasing the chance that those planets have organic matter deemed to have been part of the cocktail that may have led to the genesis of life on the early Earth.
This scenario "is plausible," said Tom Millar, an astrophysicist at Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland, who was not involved with the study. "These molecules will probably be found in [many] more places."
Next step
The next step in scanning deep space for the building blocks of life is to find unambiguous evidence of amino acids, the basic units of protein molecules, said Millar. A number of studies have purported to have detected amino acids in space already, but most have been controversial, he said.
Earlier this year researchers did find a precursor to the amino acid glycine in deep space (see, Deep space yields building block of life, Cosmos Online).
Millar's team plan to use the ultra-high power ALMA (Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array) telescope currently under construction in Chile, which may rise to the challenge of detecting these elusive clues to life.
