Lai Han- Aliens? Us?

Genetic material from outer space found in a meteorite in Australia may well have played a key role in the origin of life on earth, according to a study to be published on Sunday.

European and US scientists have proved for the first time two bits of genetic coding, called nucleobases, contained in the meteor fragment, are truly extraterrestrial.

Previous studies had suggested the space rocks, which hit earth about 40 years ago, might have been contaminated upon impact.

Both of the molecules identified, uracil and xanthine, "are present in our DNA and RNA," said lead author Zita Martins, a researcher at Imperial College London.

RNA, or ribonucleic acid, is another key part of the genetic coding that makes up our bodies.

These molecules would also have been essential to the still-mysterious alchemy that somehow gave rise, about four billion years ago, to life itself.

"We know that meteorites very similar to the Murchison meteorite, which is the one we analysed, were delivering the building blocks of life to earth 3.8 to 4.5 billion years ago," Martins told AFP in an interview.

Competing theories suggest nucleobases were synthesised closer to home, but Martins said the atmospheric conditions of early earth would have rendered that process difficult or impossible.

A team of European and US scientists showed the two types of molecules in the Australian meteorite contained a heavy form of carbon - carbon 13 - which could only have been formed in space.

"We believe early life may have adopted nucleobases from meteoric fragments for use in genetic coding, enabling them to pass on their successful features to subsequent generations," Martins said.

If so, this would have been the start of an evolutionary process leading over billions of years to all the flora and fauna - including human beings - in existence today.

The study, to be published in Earth Planetary Science Letters, also has implications for life on other planets.

"Because meteorites represent leftover materials from the formation of the solar system, the key components of life - including nucleobases - could be widespread in the cosmos," said co-author Mark Sephton, also at Imperial College London.

"As more and more of life's raw materials are discovered in objects from space, the possibility of life springing forth wherever the right chemistry is present becomes more likely," he said.

Uracil is an organic compound found in RNA, where it binds in a genetic base pair with another molecule, adenine.

Xanthine is not directly part of RNA or DNA, but participates in a series of chemical reactions inside the RNA of cells.

The two types of nucleobases and the ratio of light-to-heavy carbon molecules were identified through gas chromatography and mass spectrometry, technologies that were not available during earlier analyses of the now-famous meteorite.

Even so, said Martins, the process was extremely laborious and time-consuming, one reason it had not be carried out up to now by other scientists.


Personal views:
Us aliens? Maybe, we are almost the smartest things that ever happened. No? Then what has it got to do with monkeys being our "ancestors"? That makes them alien right? yes?

Lai Han- Cannibalism

AN eight-year-old boy was kept chained in his cellar by his cannibal family while they skinned and ate parts of him a grotesque cannibal orgy.

Sobbing Ondrej Mauerova was rescued alive when a neighbour’s TV picked up footage from a camera filming his agony, a court in the Czech Republic has heard.

He had been partially skinned after monstrous mum Klara, 31, caged him for months while relatives who were also in a sick cult feasted on his raw flesh, an appalled judge was told yesterday.

The mum wept in a Czech court as her evil was exposed in a case echoing the Fritzl dungeon horror in Austria.

Go to our killers, cannibals and their victims special gallery

Ondrej and his helpless brother Jakub, nine, were kept in cages or handcuffed to tables as they were ritually Tortured, Burnt and Whipped with belts.

Their life of hell only ended when a neighbour in the city of Brno bought a CCTV baby monitor.

Instead of pictures of his newborn he was confronted by live images of Ondrej naked in the cellar — beaten and chained.

Cops swooped on the house next door and also freed a girl posing as an adopted sister aged 13 and clutching a teddy.

She later turned out to be 34 - and one of the torturers. The boys’ mum accused the woman - fellow cult member Barbora Skrlova — of brainwashing her. She wailed: "Terrible things have happened. I realise it and can’t understand how I could have allowed it."

The court in her home city heard the abuse of her children was co-ordinated via text messages sent by a leader of the Grail Movement cult - who was known only as the "Doctor".

Her sister Katerina was also involved.

The abuse trial of the boys’ mum, another relative and their bogus sister Skrlova - who fled and was later found posing as a boy in Norway - continues.

Three others also face charges.

Don't you just love cannibalism?! Makes me feel that the world is suffering from a scarity of food and we have to resort to eating each other. GROSSNESS OVERLOAD!