Publication Date:
2016-04-29
Description:
Ribose is the central molecular subunit in RNA, but the prebiotic origin of ribose remains unknown. We observed the formation of substantial quantities of ribose and a diversity of structurally related sugar molecules such as arabinose, xylose, and lyxose in the room-temperature organic residues of photo-processed interstellar ice analogs initially composed of H2O, CH3OH, and NH3 Our results suggest that the generation of numerous sugar molecules, including the aldopentose ribose, may be possible from photochemical and thermal treatment of cosmic ices in the late stages of the solar nebula. Our detection of ribose provides plausible insights into the chemical processes that could lead to formation of biologically relevant molecules in suitable planetary environments.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Meinert, Cornelia -- Myrgorodska, Iuliia -- de Marcellus, Pierre -- Buhse, Thomas -- Nahon, Laurent -- Hoffmann, Soren V -- d'Hendecourt, Louis Le Sergeant -- Meierhenrich, Uwe J -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2016 Apr 8;352(6282):208-12. doi: 10.1126/science.aad8137.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Universite Nice Sophia Antipolis, Institut de Chimie de Nice, UMR 7272 CNRS, 28 Avenue Valrose, 06108 Nice, France. cornelia.meinert@unice.fr uwe.meierhenrich@unice.fr. ; Universite Nice Sophia Antipolis, Institut de Chimie de Nice, UMR 7272 CNRS, 28 Avenue Valrose, 06108 Nice, France. Synchrotron SOLEIL, L'Orme des Merisiers, St Aubin BP48, 91192 Gif-sur-Yvette, France. ; Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale, CNRS, Universite Paris-Sud, Universite Paris-Saclay, bat 121, 91405 Orsay, France. ; Centro de Investigaciones Quimicas, Universidad Autonoma del Estado de Morelos, Avenida Universidad 1001, 62209 Cuernavaca, Mexico. ; Synchrotron SOLEIL, L'Orme des Merisiers, St Aubin BP48, 91192 Gif-sur-Yvette, France. ; Aarhus University, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Ny Munkegade 120, 8000 Aarhus, Denmark.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27124456" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Acetic Acid/chemistry
;
Ammonia/chemistry
;
Arabinose/chemical synthesis
;
*Cosmic Radiation
;
Extraterrestrial Environment
;
*Ice
;
Meteoroids
;
*Origin of Life
;
Pentoses/chemical synthesis
;
Photochemical Processes
;
RNA/*chemistry
;
Ribose/*chemical synthesis
;
Ultraviolet Rays
;
Xylose/chemical synthesis
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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