Interstellar Peptides Point to Extraterrestrial Origin of Life’s Building Blocks

Peptides can form on cosmic dust despite water presence, challenging previous beliefs and suggesting a possible extraterrestrial origin for life’s building blocks.

Peptides are organic compounds that play a crucial role in many biological processes, for example, as enzymes. A research team led by Dr. Serge Krasnokutski from the Astrophysics Laboratory at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy at the University of Jena had already demonstrated that simple peptides can form on cosmic dust particl