Sugar found in meteorites may have helped secure its own survival on early Earth

This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Is there life elsewhere, or is Earth unique in the universe? This is one of humanity's great unanswered questions.

One way to approach this mystery is to investigate how life began here on Earth. Our research explores the conditions in which a mixture of molecules somehow transformed from chemistry into biology. In a new study published in Scientific Reports, we shed new light on one possible step in this process: how a fragile sugar from outer space may have helped create the conditions for its own survival on Earth, where it eventually became the backbone of one of life's most important molecules.

Scientists think life arose from a complex mixture of water, minerals and carbon-containing molecules: the proverbial primordial soup. These mixtures may have been in oceans, lakes or hot springs. They would have been shaped by changing temperatures, flowing water, mineral surfaces and evaporation, creating conditions in which increasingly complex chemistry could develop.

Researchers try to recreate these processes in laboratories, often using purified chemicals and carefully controlled mixtures. This approach helps isolate individual reactions and remove variables, but it can leave out important interactions in nature's "messy" chemistry. One molecule studied in these experiments is RNA.

RNA plays a vital role in storing and using genetic information in modern organisms and is thought to have been important in the origin and early evolution of life. However, RNA doesn't form easily. Its molecular backbone contains a fragile sugar called ribose.

When heated, ribose can break down into brown goop, much as table sugar turns into caramel. One thing that can protect ribose molecules is the element boron. In the form of borate (a molecule containing boron, oxygen and hydrogen), it binds to ribose and helps prevent it from breaking down.