Nebula-Relay Hypothesis: The Chirality of Biological Molecules in Molecular Clouds

Abstract

Read online

The chiral puzzle of biological molecules is thought to be closely related to the origin of life and is still a mystery so far. Previously, we proposed a new model on the origin of life, Nebula-Relay hypothesis, which assumed that the life on Earth originated at the planetary system of the Sun’s predecessor star and then filled in the pre-solar nebula after its death. As primitive lives existed in the pre-solar nebula for a long time, did the chiral biomolecules form during this period? We explore such a possibility in this work and find that the ultra-low temperature environment of molecular clouds is beneficial to generating the chiral polymer chain of biological molecules.

Keywords

• chirality
• Nebula-Relay hypothesis
• molecular cloud
• biological molecules
• peptide chain