"Prebiotic chemistry" refers to the study of chemical reactions and processes that occurred on Earth before life originated. It focuses on understanding how the basic building blocks of life, such as amino acids and nucleotides, could have formed under the conditions of early Earth.
Full definition
«Perhaps the formation
of prebiotic chemistry on Mars was as simple as cooling of Martian lavas,» says Marc Hirschmann, a planetary scientist at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and St. Paul, who was not involved in the research.
At each site, Dragonfly would sample the surface and atmosphere with a suite of carefully selected science instruments that will characterize the habitability of Titan's environment, investigate how
far prebiotic chemistry progressed, and search for chemical signatures indicative of water - and / or hydrocarbon - based life.
This hidden ocean is, says Hayes, «the most accessible laboratory
for prebiotic chemistry in the solar system» — a potential habitat for life.
In the meantime, 2009 Nobel laureate Jack Szostak of Harvard Medical School has been packaging
prebiotic chemistry into simple membranes to see how protocells could have self - assembled out of fatty acids.
At Titan, Cassini
found prebiotic chemistry — which means the moon is essentially a frozen version of what the Earth was several billion years ago.
A comparison with the most primitive life - forms on Earth will tell us a lot about whether the spark that
changes prebiotic chemistry into life is common or rare.
«We can test how
far prebiotic chemistry has progressed in an environment that we know has the ingredients for life,» said lead investigator Elizabeth Turtle of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md..
Gradually, painfully, through some four decades of effort, Sandford and the other scientists have teased out different strands of the story
of prebiotic chemistry.
With Dragonfly, «we can evaluate how far
prebiotic chemistry has progressed in an environment that we know has ingredients for life,» says the mission's lead investigator Elizabeth Turtle, a planetary scientist from Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
To test their hypothesis, they built an early Earth model environment, an organic - rich aqueous solution in which schreibersite might react and corrode in a way similar to how events may have unfolded in
prebiotic chemistry.
The results imply that
prebiotic chemistry may be bubbling up in other parts of the cosmos too.
«This is a meteorite whose organics had been found altered by heat and of little appeal for bio - or
prebiotic chemistry, yet the very Solar System processes that lead to its alteration seem also to have brought about novel and complex molecules of definite prebiotic interest such as polyethers.»
That could give the team time, Turtle said, to «evaluate how far
prebiotic chemistry has progressed in an environment where we know we have the ingredients for life.»
A torrent of findings has shown that giant Titan (3,200 miles wide, larger than the planet Mercury) and tiny Enceladus (just one - tenth as big) are worlds of unexpected complexity, placing them among the most promising extraterrestrial sites in our solar system to look for
prebiotic chemistry or even for life itself.
(1a)
Prebiotic chemistry / evolutionary organic chemistry (1b) Earliest life and habitats on Earth: the fossil and geological records (1c) Evolution of microbial and eukaryotic life (1d) Terrestrial vs deep sea environments for the origin of life (1e) Analog environments for early Earth and elsewhere
«Finding this molecule supports the view that
prebiotic chemistry may first get started in interstellar space.»
«The GBT can be used to fully explore the possibility that a significant amount of
prebiotic chemistry may occur in space long before it occurs on a newly formed planet,» said Remijan.
AB: Since many astrobiologists are currently examining hydrothermal vents, in search of extremophiles, does
the prebiotic chemistry actually get decomposed rather than enhanced by the presence of such ocean venting?
Missions selected were Comet Astrobiology Exploration Sample Return (CAESAR), a mission to return a sample from the nucleus of comet 67P / Churyumov - Gerasimenko, and Dragonfly, a drone - like rotorcraft lander that would explore
the prebiotic chemistry and habitability of dozens of sites on Saturn's moon Titan.
There's also probably «tholins», a term coined by Carl Sagan in 1979 to describe the complex organic molecules at the heart of
prebiotic chemistry.