#biomolecules — Public Fediverse posts

Sugars are essential #biomolecules, serving as metabolic fuels, nucleic acid backbone components and structural or energy-storage polymers.

A central question in origin-of-life research is how monosaccharides formed on the primitive Earth, as laboratory experiments under #prebiotic conditions yield insufficient concentrations.

The detection of #ribose, #glucose and other monosaccharides in #asteroids and #meteorites suggests an exogenous origin, possibly in the interstellar medium (ISM) before meteoritic parent-body formation.

However, no #sugar has been observed in the ISM so far.

Now astronomers report the discovery of #erythrulose, a chiral four-carbon ketose, in the ISM.

Erythrulose appears to be at least eight times more abundant than analogous three-carbon sugars, which remain undetected in our ultrasensitive observations.

Quantum chemical and astrochemical models indicate that erythrulose forms efficiently on interstellar dust grains from simpler two-carbon aldehydes and alcohols.

As ketoses readily isomerize into aldoses in aqueous conditions, interstellar erythrulose could have contributed to the sugar inventory available for early metabolic and replication processes.

#astrobiology #astronomy
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-026-02905-7