A research team found reproducing populations of Manila clams in Cape Cod and Boston Harbor. A stretch of Atlantic shoreline that had remained free of Manila clams now appears to support reproducing populations of the invasive shellfish. Biologists led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst, MIT Sea Grant at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and [...]
Outer space: it’s cold, it’s dark, it’s mostly empty. And it’s occasionally very sweet.
Astronomers peering into the heart of our galaxy have spotted traces of erythrulose, the same kind of sugar that’s found in raspberries, kiwis, and other fruits, speckled in a giant gas cloud.
The delectable discovery, detailed in a new study published in the journal Nature Astronomy, is the first time sugar, a key ingredient for life, has been detected in interstellar space.
The detection “tells us that these sugars are more common than we previously thought,” study lead author Izaskun Jiménez-Serra, an astrochemist at Spain’s Centre for Astrobiology, told The Guardian. “It opens the possibility for life to develop on other worlds in a similar fashion to what it did on Earth.”
Sugar’s origins on Earth remain a mystery. Ribose and glucose have been found on asteroids, and some scientists believe that, like water, the compound was first brought here by wayward space rocks that crashed into our planet.
But where are these sugars forming in space? One likely culprit is molecular clouds, the dense regions of the gas and dust that make up the universe’s interstellar medium. These clouds can act as a “chemical factory,” the researchers wrote, fusing disparate atoms together to form more complex substances, with more than 340 molecules having been detected in the interstellar medium so far.
To carry out their saccharine search, the researchers used two radio telescopes in Spain to peer into a molecular cloud near the center of the Milky Way. Where earlier searches would have struggled to make sense of all the noise coming out of the highly dense region, theirs was — quite literally — laser-focused. Another team recently developed a way to recreate sugar’s light signature in space when vaporized with a laser, Scientific American noted, and this allowed them to narrow their focus.
What they found was unexpected. The cloud was swimming in erythrulose, which is made of four carbon atoms. But there were almost no signs of sugars made from three carbon atoms, SciAm explained, cutting against the prevailing belief that sugars gradually formed by adding one carbon atom at a time. This led the team to suspect that the four-carbon sugar was formed by two other organic molecules that each contain a carbon pair.
It’s a major boon for astrobiology. Sugars like ribose and deoxyribose form the backbone of RNA and DNA. And erythrulose in particular can form ribonucleotides, the building blocks of RNA. In all, they estimated that up to 50 million tons of erythrulose could have rained down on Earth while life was still in its primordial age.
“To have suffered this kind of rain of organics, I think that seems to have been a key step,” Jiménez-Serra told The Guardian. “That material could have contributed to prebiotic soups where the first biomolecules were synthesized.”
More on space: Scientists Say They’ve Identified an Earth-Like Planet Right Next Door
The post You’ll Never Guess What Tasty Molecule Astronomers Just Detected In Space appeared first on Futurism.
New research suggests that low oxygen levels may help alleviate disease caused by defects in mitochondrial quality control. Oxygen is essential for people—and most other organisms—but more is not always better. When oxygen accumulates beyond what cells can safely use, it can become toxic and contribute to serious health problems. In the brain, excess oxygen [...]A leaf-eared mouse living more than 6,700 meters (22,000 feet) above sea level in the Andes has shattered assumptions about where mammals can survive. Near the summit of an Andean volcano, where the air contains barely half as much oxygen as it does at sea level, scientists found something that should not have been there: [...]
An international team of researchers has demonstrated a new biosignature detection method for distinguishing between abiotic and biotic apatite mineral samples on Mars using instruments already aboard the Perseverance Rover, rather than returning samples to Earth.
The team said their mineral-based biosignature detection approach was successful in identifying samples with nearly 98% accuracy and allows for “deeper time” searches for signs of life, given the longer-lasting nature of minerals compared to biological materials. They also suggest their approach could broaden the capabilities of upcoming rover and life-hunting missions without adding new tools or sensors.
In a study detailing the team’s technique, Robert M. Hazen from the Carnegie Institution for Science and colleagues explained that searching for life and biosignatures beyond Earth “is a central objective of astrobiology.” They also note that this research is complemented by studies exploring the origin and early evolution of terrestrial life. Still, they add, although identifying biosignatures remains a key challenge, “robust mineral biosignatures remain limited.”
For example, most proposed biosignature missions focus on organic molecules or searching for fossils preserved in sedimentary environments or aquatic environments, including the subsurface oceans of some of the solar system’s moons. However, there are few, if any, proposed missions searching for signs of life preserved in mineral records, which the team notes “can retain records of biological activity over much longer geological timescales”
On Mars, NASA’s Perseverance rover has meticulously collected soil and rock samples deemed most likely to contain biosignatures. However, efforts to send a future sample-return mission to the red planet to retrieve samples are currently stalled and may never be completed.
According to the study authors, there are flight-ready instruments “already deployed on the “Perseverance” rover and planned for deployment on the “Rosalind Franklin” rover capable of searching for signs of life in place rather than returning the samples to labs on Earth. However, they add, “to fully exploit these mission-limited yet information-rich tools, it is essential to efficiently extract as much diagnostic value as possible from the data they generate.”
To search for mineral-based biosignatures, the team focused its research on Raman spectroscopy.
“Raman spectroscopy is particularly attractive because it provides bond-specific information on crystal structure and chemical substitution in a nondestructive manner,” they explain.
The team also notes that the Raman spectra acquired by the rover’s instruments “are highly comparable to those obtained under laboratory conditions,” increasing the robustness of any possible life signal.
“This consistency enables direct translation of laboratory reference datasets to planetary environments,” they write.
However, they add, Raman spectra from natural geological samples are often complex, including “overlapping vibrational modes, heterogeneous backgrounds, and chemistry-dependent band shifts.” Until now, this complexity has made interpreting samples based on individual spectral peaks or qualitative inspection inherently challenging.
“Identifying reliable biosignatures that can be detected by flight-ready instruments, such as Raman spectroscopy, remains a central challenge in astrobiology,” the researchers explain. “Developing robust mineralogical indicators of life therefore represents a critical and complementary approach for planetary exploration.”
To test their approach, the team focused on the mineral apatite. A ubiquitous phosphate, the team notes that apatite can be found “in terrestrial and extraterrestrial environments.” Although apatite is a major component of biological formations such as teeth and bones, it also forms naturally, providing an opportunity to search for biosignatures over much longer timescales if scientists can differentiate the two.
“Here, we integrate Raman spectroscopy with interpretable machine learning to distinguish biotic from abiotic apatite, a ubiquitous phosphate mineral in terrestrial and extraterrestrial environments,” the researchers write.
First, Hazen and colleagues compiled 331 Raman spectra samples. Critically, they included only specimens with known origin attributes: biogenic, abiogenic, or synthetic.
Next, they used this data to extract 21 “band-resolved features.” This was accomplished by training a random forest classifier to identify the “most diagnostic” features of each sample.
“Determining the origin of a sample involves assessing multiple independently varying features of a Raman spectrum, including band positions, widths, and relative intensities, the type of multivariate analysis well suited to machine learning,” the study authors explain.
After some comparative analysis, the team ultimately determined that a sample’s carbonate band and the width of the dominant phosphate band, “reflecting chemical composition and crystal structure, respectively,” were the strongest indicators of biological, natural, or synthetic origin.
After using their method to check the 311 samples, the team said the model successfully distinguished biotic from abiotic apatite “with classification accuracy exceeding 96%.” In fact, the team reported that their mineral-based biosignature detection method misidentified only one biotic apatite sample as abiotic and one abiotic sample as biological.
“Here, we show that biologically formed apatite can be distinguished from abiotic counterparts using interpretable machine learning applied to Raman spectra,” the study authors write.
When discussing the potential implications of their new mineral-based biosignature detection approach, the team noted that their findings establish a “broadly applicable and mission-relevant strategy for deep-time archives and future planetary missions.” More broadly, the researchers note that their findings highlight the “growing importance of combining flight-ready analytical instruments with AI” to fully leverage datasets already captured by Mars rovers and other “in situ” planetary missions.
“As planetary exploration increasingly shifts toward autonomous decision-making and target selection, the integration of interpretable AI with mineralogical biosignatures offers a powerful and extensible framework,” they write.
Beyond mineral-based biosignature detection strategies, the research team notes that future life hunting missions will “increasingly rely on the joint interpretation of mineralogical and organic spectroscopic signatures.” These include on-board py-GC-MS measurements, infrared spectroscopy, luminescence, laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy, X-ray fluorescence, and “other analytic methods.”
Future approaches will increasingly rely on AI to analyze these disparate datasets, which the authors note will allow for biologically mediated patterns to be distinguished from natural or synthetic backgrounds “in a physically and chemically consistent manner.”
“In this context, such an integrative and interpretable framework provides a pathway toward autonomous, mechanism-informed life detection across diverse planetary environments, advancing the broader goals of planetary science in understanding habitability, biosignature preservation, and the coevolution of geology and biology,” the authors conclude.
The study “Mineral biosignature identification from Raman spectroscopy using machine learning” was published in PNAS Nexus.
Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.
World's highest-living mouse survives in thin air by solving a problem that no other mammal can—not even you, humanArchaeologists have debated whether royal women ever used the weapons in their tombs. Their bones may have settled the argument.Scientists say some of the traits that define modern humans may have evolved only after long-standing biological and cultural barriers were broken. Human evolution is often presented as a clear progression: brains grew larger, faces became smaller, tools improved, and our ancestors gradually became more like us. A new study suggests that this familiar story [...]Researchers have identified and formally described a new species of the African monkey genus Colobus living in the remote interior of the Democratic Republic of Congo, marking only the fifth new monkey species found on the continent in the past 75 years.
The post Scientists Discover New Monkey Species in Democratic Republic of Congo appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
Living nearly 900 meters underwater, this isopod evolved unusual adaptations to thrive in the world’s most food-scarce environment.It hijacks a common process present in all cells
The post How This Emerging Tick-borne Virus Escapes Your Immune System appeared first on Nautilus.
Scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science have engineered Nicotiana benthamiana, a fast-growing relative of tobacco, to produce five different psychedelic compounds.
The achievement, detailed in a study published in Science Advances, brings together biosynthetic pathways that nature distributes across three different kingdoms of life.
The five compounds (DMT, psilocybin, psilocin, bufotenin, and 5-MeO-DMT) are typically sourced from an Amazonian shrub, mushrooms, and the defensive skin glands of a desert toad. Extracting even one of these molecules from its natural source is a slow process. Producing all five in a single, easily cultivated plant had not been achieved before.
Despite coming from such different sources, all five of these molecules share a common origin: tryptophan, an amino acid found in every living thing. In humans, tryptophan is the building block for serotonin, which helps explain why these psychedelics interact with serotonin receptors in the brain. This shared chemistry gave the Weizmann team, led by Dr. Paula Berman and Prof. Asaph Aharoni, a logical starting point for their experiments.
The team began by focusing on DMT to address a previously unresolved question. Researchers knew the general biochemical pathway plants use to synthesize DMT, but they had not yet identified all the genes and enzymes responsible for each step. “At the heart of the study was the challenge of making DMT,” Aharoni says.
To identify the necessary genes, the team analyzed genetic material from the Amazonian chacruna shrub and an Australian acacia species. Introducing these genes into Nicotiana benthamiana allowed the plant to produce DMT within days.
The researchers applied the same gene transfer approach to the other four psychedelics, but the engineered plants initially produced only trace amounts of 5-MeO-DMT. Protein-design specialists Prof. Sarel Fleishman and Dr. Olga Khersonsky determined that the limitation was due to a poor molecular fit in one enzyme’s active site. Replacing a single amino acid resolved the issue.
“We mutated one amino acid in the sequence and got a 40-fold increase in the production of 5-MeO-DMT,” Berman says.
Once all five biosynthetic pathways were functioning separately, the researchers combined them within a single plant. The result was a tobacco relative capable of producing DMT from plants, psilocin and psilocybin from fungi, and bufotenin and 5-MeO-DMT from toads, all at the same time. “In effect, we created a kind of biological ‘cocktail’ — not by mixing substances externally, but by combining the underlying pathways inside one organism,” Aharoni says.
Combining all five pathways reduced the yield of each compound, as they competed for the same pool of tryptophan. The researchers also introduced bacterial enzymes to attach chlorine and bromine atoms to the psychedelic molecules, creating modified psychedelic molecules that do not naturally occur in the engineered plant. Some similar modified molecules have shown antidepressant-like effects in previous studies.
The bottleneck also highlighted a broader research question about the natural role of these compounds. These molecules likely function as defenses or as tools for interacting with microbes and insects in the organisms that produce them, rather than evolving to affect human consciousness.
“If we can move these pathways into a model plant that grows quickly and is easy to manipulate, we can start asking what these compounds actually do for the plant,” Berman explains.
There is a clear practical benefit to this approach. Plants used for ayahuasca are increasingly threatened by habitat loss and rising demand, and the Sonoran Desert toad is declining due to overcollection and habitat destruction. A fast-growing laboratory plant capable of producing these compounds within a week provides an alternative that does not rely on harvesting wild species.
The Weizmann researchers are now working on a plant that can produce the complete ayahuasca mixture, which includes both DMT and the compound required for it to be active when taken orally. They are also exploring whether these psychedelics could be produced in edible plants capable of delivering carefully regulated doses.
Whether this platform becomes a practical manufacturing system will depend on overcoming the metabolic bottleneck that currently limits production when multiple pathways operate simultaneously.
Austin Burgess is a writer and researcher with a background in sales, marketing, and data analytics. He holds an MBA, a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, and a data analytics certification. His work focuses on breaking scientific developments, with an emphasis on emerging biology, cognitive neuroscience, and archaeological discoveries.
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