Santa Cruz de Tenerife (EFE).- Susana Iglesias-Groth, a researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), has discovered the existence of tryptophan in a star system of the Perseus Cloud, an essential amino acid for the formation of proteins and for the development of living organisms.
Finding reported this Tuesday by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias and published in the Monthly notices of the royal astronomical society magazine.
Tryptophan is one of the 20 amino acids that are considered essential for the formation of proteins, key macromolecules for the development of life on Earth, explains the IAC.
This amino acid presents many spectral signatures in the infrared range, as the IAC researcher Susana Iglesias-Groth had previously characterized in the laboratory.
Using data from the Spitzer space observatory, the IAC researcher has identified more than 10 emission bands for this molecule, the most powerful according to laboratory measurements.
“Given its spectral coverage in the infrared and the extensive spectroscopic database of the Spitzer telescope, this amino acid was an obvious candidate to be explored in space,” explains Susana Iglesias-Groth.
The study has considered data from multiple star and planet formation regions, but it has been in one of the closest and best-known regions, the Perseus molecular complex, specifically in the IC 348 star system, where the combination of all the data The satellite’s spectroscopic measurements have made it possible to achieve greater sensitivity and to identify the spectral lines that tryptophan produces in the laboratory, adds the IAC.
“IC 348 is an exceptional star-forming region and an extraordinary chemistry laboratory; Thanks to its proximity to Earth, we can carry out some of the most sensitive searches for molecules in its interstellar medium”, points out Iglesias-Groth.
Evidence for other molecules
Researcher who recently detected evidence of other molecules in the same region, such as water (H20), carbon dioxide (CO2), hydrogen cyanide (HCN), ammonia (NH3), acetylene (C2H2), benzene (C6H6), hydrocarbons aromatic polycyclics and fullerenes, among others.
“The novelty of this work is that tryptophan had never been detected in the interstellar medium before, but also, despite decades of research, there is no accepted detection of other amino acids in any star-forming region,” the researcher underlines.
The study presents evidence that tryptophan-associated emission lines might also be present in other star-forming regions and suggests that their presence, and possibly that of other amino acids, is common in the gas from which stars and planets form.
“It is likely that amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, may be enriching the gas in protoplanetary disks and the atmospheres of recently formed young exoplanets, and perhaps this may accelerate the process of life appearing on them,” says Iglesias-Groth.
The analysis of the emission bands of this molecule has also made it possible to estimate the temperature at which it is found in the gas in this cloud: about 280 Kelvin, that is, close to zero degrees Celsius, a temperature very similar to that measured for the molecular hydrogen and water in the interstellar medium of IC 348 in previous studies published by Iglesias-Groth.
The new work also presents an estimate of the abundance of tryptophan in the same region: about ten billion times less abundant than molecular hydrogen.
“It is well known that amino acids are part of meteorites and that they could already be present in the early days of the formation of the Solar System”, explains Iglesias-Groth.
“The finding of tryptophan, and hopefully other amino acids in the future, could indicate that protein-building agents, which are key to the development of living organisms, exist naturally in regions where stars form and planetary systems, and that, perhaps, life is more common in our Galaxy than we could have anticipated”, concludes the researcher. EFE