Cell membranes are a crucial building block for life on Earth but for them to exist on Saturn's moon Titan, with its methane lakes and -290° F temperatures (-170° C) and all, they would require a rather different makeup. NASA scientists have now detected a key ingredient they say could form membrane like-structures in Titan's harsh conditions, providing a new clue in the search for life elsewhere in the solar system.
Back in 2015, scientists from Cornell University conducted a study designed to explore how life could come to exist on colder worlds without water. More specifically, they ran computer simulations investigating chemicals that could make up cell-like membranes on Saturn's largest moon Titan.
On Earth, these thin, but strong and flexible water-based layers enclose the organic matter of every cell. But in worlds where water doesn't exist but methane does, what would these membranes look like? The researchers determined that the most promising candidate was a colorless, poisonous organic compound called acrylonitrile, also known as vinyl cyanide. The researchers said that these could possibly join together in sheets to form hollow spheres they dubbed azotosomes.
"The ability to form a stable membrane to separate the internal environment from the external one is important, because it provides a means to contain chemicals long enough to allow them to interact," says Michael Mumma, director of the Goddard Center for Astrobiology, which is funded by the NASA Astrobiology Institute. "If membrane-like structures could be formed by vinyl cyanide, it would be an important step on the pathway to life on Saturn's moon Titan."
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