Research that will make it easier for us to find aliens

Life on Earth is the result of the interaction of hundreds of chemical components and reactions. Some of these compounds and reactions are found in all organisms and create a cosmic biochemistry that applies to all life on earth. However, this concept of universality is specific to known biochemistry and does not allow assumptions to be made regarding samples that are now unobserved.

In contrast, until now the search for extraterrestrial life forms has been carried out as a reference to this description of the ‘life form’ on Earth that we have talked about. For astrobiologists looking for life on other planets, there was no means to hypothesize features of “life we don’t know.” But scientists have managed to overcome this limitation by identifying the cosmic patterns in the chemistry of life, which are not necessarily tied to molecules, with a new study.

A new opportunity to identify features of alien life

The findings of the research are new to hypothesize features of alien life with different biochemistry from life on Earth. It is said to present an opportunity.

The study’s lead author, Dylan Gagler, a bioinformatics analyst at New York University Langone Medical Center in Manhattan, became interested in cosmic biology because of his desire to better grasp the phenomenon of life. Stating that the phenomenon of longevity is an extremely difficult concept to detect, Gagler said, “As far as I can tell, life is ultimately a biochemical process, so I wanted to explore what life does at this level.” saves in the form.

With this goal, Gagler and another co-author of the study Sara Imari Walker, associate professor in the School of Earth and Space Studies and the School of Complex Adaptive Systems at Arizona State University, said that enzymes, the functional drivers of biochemistry, are a good way to approach this concept. They decided there was a way. Using the Integrated Microbial Genomes and Microbiomes knowledge base, they along with their collaborators investigated the enzymatic makeup of bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes, thereby identifying many of the Earth’s biochemistry.

A new definition of ‘universal biochemical structure’ was made

“We want to have new tools to describe and even hypothesize features of life that we do not know”, Walker said, “To do this, we aim to identify the cosmic laws that must be applied to any arbitrary biochemical system. This includes developing quantitative theory for the origins of life and using theory and statistics to guide our search for life on other planets.” Stating that humans are not just composed of molecules, which are part of their bodies, Walker notes that their work aims to develop ways to transform this philosophical understanding into a testable scientific hypothesis.

The study may guide the search for new life samples

“This new generation of large-scale statistical models of biochemistry We identified medical biochemical universality and found that they are more generalizable to unknown life forms than the classical one, which is defined by certain molecules and responses common to all life on earth. Hyunju Kim, the co-author of the study, says that this discovery has enabled them to develop a new theory that can guide the search for new life examples for the general rules of life.

“We can expect these results to be valid anywhere in the cosmos, and this is an exciting possibility that will motivate many different studies in the future,” notes co-author Chris Kempes of the Santa Fe Institute.