The chemical building blocks of life carried to Earth by meteorites may have been the seed of life on our planet, according to evidence released yesterday by NASA. The evidence hinges on the molecular structure of amino acids, the repeated chemical units that make up proteins found in all living organisms. The molecules come in left- and right-handed varieties, and only left-handed varieties are found in life on Earth.
NASA scientists had previously found a disproportionate amount of the left-handed form of isovaline, an amino acid, in a meteorite sample. The latest study confirms that the previous sample was not an aberration.
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