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by calicorey on August 11th, 2011

calicorey

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The components of DNA have been confirmed to exist in meteorites, researchers stated. Does that mean we are all extraterrestrials?

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/08/09/building-blocks-dna-found-in-meteorites-from-space/

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  • by xprofessor on August 11th, 2011

    xprofessor

    Actually what they found were molecular components of DNA -- still pretty amazing. I don't think this finding supports the panspermia hypothesis over local abiogenesis. What it suggests, however, is that DNA might not be as exotic as we think.

    Thursday, Aug. 11, 2011
    http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2087758,00.html
    IMAGE http://img.timeinc.net/time/daily/2011/1108/meteorite_dna_0809.jpg
    "As far back as the 1960s, it was clear that amino acids, which link up to form proteins, can and do form in space. And now scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., are claiming that another set of molecules crucial to life have also rained down on Earth: adenine and guanine, two of the four so-called nucleobases that, along with cytosine and thymine, form the rungs of DNA's ladder-like structure."

    "...contamination on the ground after the meteorite landed has been the most likely explanation. But once he and his collaborators got hold of samples from 12 meteorites that had landed mostly in Antarctica...they discovered all sorts of other molecules — substances that were similar in structure but not biologically useful."

    "That was a surprise; if a meteorite picked up its biological traces on the ground, the adenine and guanine would have been accompanied by other, equally familiar molecules — not these substances that were not quite nucleobases but not quite not either."

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    • Thanks for the information. I learned a lot!

      calicorey

      by calicorey on August 12th, 2011

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