Explosive Prebiotic Molecule Could Reveal Clues to Life in Space

This compound, described as a “seed of life” and even a “prebiotic bomb,” could offer critical insights into how life’s building blocks form beyond Earth, the journal Nature Communications reported.

For the first time, scientists have successfully isolated a compound that could provide new insights into the chemistry needed for life to exist in space.

An international research team, including Ryan Fortenberry, an astrochemist at the University of Mississippi; Ralf Kaiser, a chemistry professor at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa; and Alexander M. Mebel, a computational chemist at Florida International University, has managed to synthesize methanetetrol. Their findings on this long-sought compound were recently published in the journal Nature.

“This is essentially a prebiotic concentrate — a seed of life molecule,” Fortenberry said. “It’s something that can lead to more complex chemistry if given the opportunity. Think of it like an acorn that will grow into a tree in the Grove.

“The acorn alone cannot make a tree; it requires sunlight and water and lots of other things. But it can be what starts the process.”

Methanetetrol belongs to a rare and challenging group of chemicals known as ortho acids. These compounds are notoriously difficult to isolate and analyze, yet they are believed to play an important role in the early chemical processes that make life possible.

To mimic how methanetetrol might form in space, the researchers froze water and carbon dioxide ices to near absolute zero and exposed them to cosmic ray-like radiation. This process allowed them to release the molecule into gas form and identify it using powerful ultraviolet light.

“The detection of the only alcohol with four hydroxyl groups at the same carbon atom pushes the experimental and detection capabilities to the ‘final frontier,’ the next level beyond what could be accomplished before due to the lack of experimental and computational approaches,” said Kaiser, whose lab has been trying to isolate methanetetrol for more than five years.

Since methanetetrol has so many oxygen bonds – and because oxygen does not like to bond close to other oxygens – the compound is very unstable, meaning it is likely to break down if it is not kept in the right conditions.

“You have this compact, carbon-oxygen molecule that just really wants to go ‘boom,'” Fortenberry said. “And when it does, when you give it any kind of energy, you’ll have water, hydrogen peroxide and a number of other potential compounds that are important for life.

“It’s a like a prebiotic bomb.”

If the molecule can form in the lab, it can also form in space, the authors said. This makes the compound particularly interesting to astrochemists who are looking for potential life-supporting regions.

“While carbon is the building block of life, oxygen is what makes up nearly everything else,” Fortenberry said. “Oxygen is everywhere and is essential for life as we know it.

“So, if we can find places where methanetetrol forms naturally, we know that it is a place that has the potential building blocks to support life.”

4155/v