Cornell University researchers have cultivated an oxygen-free life on Saturn’s moon Titan. It is believed that this will be a methane based life with no oxygen which hypothetically has the possibility of having life forms exist in the cold and harsh atmosphere of the Titan which challenges the thought of water being essential for life.
Researchers have constructed the cell membrane of tiny organic nitrogen compounds and it is believed to operate in severely cold liquid methane temperature. Titan possesses oceans of liquid methane of about -300 degrees.
The cell consists of elements such as nitrogen, carbon and hydrogen molecules which are present in the deep freezing Titanic oceans and concurrently demonstrating a flexible and stable liposome on Earth. The study has been published in a popular journal called Science Advances Journal.
The cell is called “azotosome” and ‘azote’ refers to nitrogen in French whereas ‘soma’ is body in Greek.
James Stevenson, co-author of the study from the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Cornell University stated “Using molecular simulations, we demonstrate that these membranes in cryogenic solvent have an elasticity equal to that of lipid bilayers in water at room temperature.”
Stevenson further added “As a proof of concept, we also demonstrate that stable cryogenic membranes could arise from compounds observed in the atmosphere of Saturn’s moon, Titan, known for the existence of seas of liquid methane on its surface.”
Life on Earth is based on the phospholipid bilayer membrane and since it’s a water-based vesicle it grasps the cell’s organic matter and a vesicle consists of this kind of a membrane which is known as a liposome or a ‘lipid body’.
Paulette Clancy was the leader of the study and he has claimed that they had the right tools to make this work
Clancy stated, “We didn’t come in with any preconceptions about what should be in a membrane and what shouldn’t. We just worked with the compounds that we knew were there and asked, ‘If this was your palette, what can you make out of that.”
The next step of this research is to pursuit to demonstrate the behavior of the cell in methane and oxygen-free environment to observe what processes would be correspondent to metabolism and reproduction.
