Stability of nucleic acid bases in concentrated sulfuric acid: Implications for the habitability of Venus’ clouds

Significance The search for signs of life beyond Earth is a motivator in modern-day planetary exploration. While our “sister” planet Venus has a surface too hot for life, scientists have speculated that the much cooler atmosphere at 48 to 60 km above the surface might host life in Venus’ perpetual cloud cover, as Earth’s clouds do. The Venus clouds, however, are composed of concentrated sulfuric acid—an aggressive chemical that destroys most of Earth life’s biochemicals and are thought to be sterile to life of any kind. Here, we show that key molecules needed for life (nucleic acid bases) are stable in concentrated sulfuric acid, advancing the notion that the Venus atmosphere environment may be able to support complex chemicals needed for life.

• Publication year

  2023

• Venue

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

• Publication date

  2023-06-12

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Physics, Chemistry, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1073/pnas.2220007120arXiv 2306.17182PMID 37307485PMCID 10288544
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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