Building blocks of life abundant in space

Apparently, under the undirected operation of the laws of chemistry and physics, the building blocks of life spontaneously assemble in space.

Scientists scanning a galaxy 12 million light-years away with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope detected copious amounts of nitrogen containing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PANHs), molecules critical to all known forms of life. PANHs carry information for DNA and RNA and are an important component of hemoglobin, the molecule that transports oxygen through the body. They also make chlorophyll, the main molecule responsible for photosynthesis in plants, and – perhaps most importantly – they're the main ingredient in caffeine and chocolate.

PAHs are flat, chicken-wire shaped molecules made up of carbon and hydrogen, interesting to scientists because life on Earth is carbon-based. However, PAHs are not used in human biochemistry. In fact, they're better known as cancer-causing carcinogens and environmental pollutants. But swap a carbon atom with a nitrogen and a PAH becomes a PANH, a class of molecules critical to humans. Without nitrogen, it would be impossible to build amino acids, proteins, DNA, RNA, hemoglobin, and many other important molecules.