The chemistry of life as we don’t know it

Astrobiologists led by Arizona State University (ASU) have predicted the characteristics of life outside our world with a different biochemistry than terrestrial life. In new research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the team identified universal patterns in the chemistry of life that they do not seem to depend on specific molecules.

“We want to have new tools to identify and even predict features of life that we don’t know about”says co-author Sara Imari Walker of Arizona State University in a statement. “To do so, our goal is to identify the universal laws that should apply to any biochemical system. This includes the development of a quantitative theory about the origins of life and the use of theory and statistics to guide our search for life on other planets.”.

In the Land, life arises from the interaction of hundreds of compounds and chemical reactions. Some of these compounds and reactions are found in all organisms, creating a universally shared biochemistry for all life on Earth. However, this notion of universality is specific to known biochemistry and it does not allow predictions to be made about examples not yet observed.

The story of the author of the study: “Life is a biochemical process”

“We are not just the molecules that make up our bodies; we, as living beings, are an emergent property of the interactions of the many molecules of which we are made»says Walker, who is an associate professor in ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration. “What our work is doing is developing ways to turn that philosophical view into testable scientific hypotheses”.

the main author Dylan Gagler, A 2020 graduate of ASU with her master’s degree and now a bioinformatics analyst at New York University Langone Medical Center in Manhattan, said she became interested in world biology out of a desire to better understand the phenomenon of life. “It’s an amazing concept. hard to pin down», He says. “As far as I can tell, life is ultimately a biochemical process, so I wanted to explore what life is doing at that level.”.

Gagler and Walker ultimately decided that enzymes, as functional drivers of biochemistry, were a good way to approach this concept. Using the database Integrated Microbial Genomes and Microbiomesthey, together with their collaborators, were able to investigate the composition enzymatic of bacteria, archaea and eukaryotesand thus capture most of the Earth’s biochemistry.

Through this approach, the team was able to discover a new type of biochemical universality by identifying statistical patterns in the biochemical function of shared enzymes in the tree of life. In doing so, they verified that the statistical patterns originated from functional principles that can’t be explained by the common set of enzymatic functions used by all known life, and identified scaling relationships associated with general types of functions.

New type of biochemical universality

“We identified this new type of biochemical universality from the large-scale statistical patterns of biochemistry and found that they are more generalizable to unknown life forms compared to the traditional one described by the specific molecules and reactions that are common to all life.” on earth”explains co-author Hyunju Kim, a research assistant professor in the ASU School of Earth and Space Exploration and the ASU Beyond Center. “This discovery allows us to develop a new theory of the general rules of life, that can guide us in the search for new examples».

“We might expect these results to hold anywhere in the universe, and that’s an exciting possibility that motivates a lot of exciting work ahead.”says co-author Chris Kempes of the Santa Fe Institute.

Font: EUROPE PRESS, 20 minutes,

Reference article: https://www.20minutos.es/noticia/4964409/0/astrobiologists-predict-the-chemistry-of-life-as-we-do-not-know-it/?autoref=true