The spaceflight environment presents unique physicochemical conditions, including microgravity, ionizing radiation, altered fluid transport, and confined engineered habitats, which influence biological systems and biomolecular assembly processes.
Proteins are constructed from a limited alphabet of ~20 amino acids, yet the origins and selection of this specific alphabet are unresolved.
Chiral molecules are ubiquitous and necessary for life as we know it. In extant life, the amino acid and sugar constituents of proteins and biopolymers consist of only one enantiomer.
Editor’s note: As we expand outward from Earth to other worlds we are almost certainly going to encounter things we did not expect to find – things that are unlikely […]
Manganese dioxide can convert amino acids into hydrogen cyanide (HCN) without requiring methane, solving a long-standing puzzle about the origin of this key prebiotic molecule on early Earth, as reported […]
Two fundamental questions have puzzled scientists for more than 150 years. “How did life become homochiral?” and “why was this specific handedness selected?”
Editor’s note: with recent speculation about the potential habitability of other worlds and understanding the processes whereby other biospheres arise and evolve, thought needs to be given to developing sensor […]
Background/ Objectives: Resolving the origin of the genetic code is fundamental to understanding how life began its journey out of the chemical world. Since its deciphering some 60 years ago, […]
Editor’s note: with recent speculation about the potential habitability of other worlds and understanding the processes whereby other biospheres arise and evolve, thought needs to be given to developing sensor […]
In addition to being delivered via exogenous means (e.g., chondritic meteorites and comets), amino acids are hypothesized to have been present on early Earth via Urey–Miller-type abiotic processes.
