Humans and Aliens Might Share DNA Pattern | Wired Science from Wired.com

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The building blocks of life may be more than merely common in the cosmos. Humans and aliens could share a common genetic architecture. That's the tantalizing implication of a pattern found in the formation of amino acids in meteorites, deep-sea hydrothermal vents, and simulations of primordial Earth. The pattern appears to follow basic thermodynamic laws, applicable throughout the known universe. "This may implicate a universal structure of the first genetic codes anywhere," said astrophysicist Ralph Pudritz of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. There are exactly 20 standard amino acids — complex molecules that combine to form proteins, which in turn compose the nucleic acids from which the simplest self-replicating structures are built. Ten were synthesized in the famous 1953 Miller-Urey experiments, which modeled conditions believed to exist in Earth's early atmosphere and volcano-heated pools. Those 10 amino acids have also been found in meteorites, prompting debate over their role in sparking life on Earth and, perhaps, elsewhere. Pudritz's analysis, co-authored with McMaster University biophysicist Paul Higgs and published Monday on arXiv, doesn't settle the former debate, but it does suggest that basic amino acids are even more common than thought, requiring little more than a relatively warm meteorite of sufficient size to form. And that's just the start. If the observed patterns of amino acid formation — simple acids require low levels of energy to coalesce, and complex acids need more energy — indeed follow thermodynamic laws, then the basic narrative of life's emergence should be universal. "Thermodynamics is fundamental," said Pudritz. "It must hold through all points of the

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http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/04/thermodynamino.html