- Sugar molecules confirmed in interstellar medium, advancing cosmic chemistry knowledge
- Erythrulose, a four-carbon sugar, detected in Milky Way's dense molecular cloud
- Erythrulose is a precursor to Threose Nucleic Acid, linked to early life genetics
The universe is a chemical kitchen, and scientists just found "dessert" on the menu. According to a study published in Nature Astronomy, astronomers have confirmed the presence of sugar molecules in the interstellar medium (ISM), which is a massive cosmic laboratory where more than 340 molecules have been detected so far. The finding offers stunning clues about how the building blocks of life might spread across the cosmos.
This isn't the first hint of sugar beyond Earth as ribose and glucose have previously been found in meteorites and asteroid samples. However, this new discovery is different.
An international team led by astrochemist Izaskun Jimenez-Serra recently detected erythrulose, a four-carbon sugar, inside a dense molecular cloud at the center of the Milky Way. Unlike earlier "space sugar" detections, erythrulose is a true monosaccharide.
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Importantly, erythrulose is a direct chemical precursor to the backbone of Threose Nucleic Acid (TNA), a molecule many researchers believe preceded RNA and DNA in early life. This suggests that interstellar space could supply the raw ingredients for pre-RNA genetics.
Surprisingly, the team found no three-carbon sugars like glyceraldehyde. Erythrulose was at least eight times more abundant than its three-carbon analogs, raising questions about how four-carbon chains form directly in space.
"This finding was unexpected, as the prevailing view in astrochemistry is that interstellar molecules grow in size through the sequential addition of carbon atoms," Jimenez-Serra explained.
The discovery was made using two powerful radio telescopes, the 40-meter Yebes telescope and the 30-meter IRAM telescope, which scanned a molecular cloud known as G+0.693-0.027.
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The researchers estimate that between 0.5 and 50 million tonnes of this sugar could have reached Earth's surface during the Late Heavy Bombardment, roughly 4.1 to 3.8 billion years ago.
The scientists noted that the latest sugar isn't essential for life, but can easily convert to a form that's thought to be crucial to kick-starting life on Earth.
"The key ingredients for the origin of life could be present in other regions across the galaxy, opening the possibility for life to develop elsewhere in the universe," Jimenez-Serra said.
The presence of erythrulose in interstellar space therefore provides an alternative source of sugars that may have sparked the first metabolic and replication processes on early Earth.
"The detection of erythrulose is very exciting because it opens up the possibility of discovering other sugars in space, such as ribose, which is part of RNA, and other molecules vital to the origin of life," said co-author Carlos Briones.
