Joan Oró, the world-famous Catalan biochemist, has gone down in history above all for the discovery of the synthesis of adenine from hydrogen cyanide. Such a discovery put him in the world’s showcase of science. So much so, that NASA ended up knocking on his door. He collaborated with the North American agency for more than 30 years, taking part, in other projects, in the Apollo 11 mission, which took man to the Moon. He also participated in the Viking program, which explored the planet Mars. It was precisely on this mission where Oró, thanks to his intervention, avoided what would have been a major ridicule from the US agency. The story is explained in the documentary Joan Oró, the formula of life, which today, the centenary of his birth, is being released by CaixaForum on its audiovisual platform.
The year was 1976. At that time, Oró had already been collaborating with NASA for years. Among other investigations, he had analyzed the samples that the Apollo 11 mission had collected from the Moon seven years earlier. In 1976, as a principal investigator at the University of Houston, he was involved in studying samples that the Viking program had taken from Mars. The documentary says that one of the experiments detected that radioactive carbon dioxide had been released. “That meant that there was metabolic activity, that is, that in some way there was life,” Iván López, a science historian, relates in the film.
That was historic, a world milestone. NASA obtained the approval of the North American Government to give the good news to the press. They were almost one step away from saying that there was life on Mars. But at that moment Oró intervened. “He raised his hand and asked if it had been well analyzed whether these mechanisms could not have been generated in another way,” says astrophysicist Salvador Ribas. “He remembered – he adds – that there were organic elements that could have been synthesized in the laboratory without the need for there to be a life that had created them.”
Oró’s intervention forced a reanalysis that ended up concluding that it was much more likely that this metabolic activity had its origin in other natural mechanisms not related to possible life on Mars. “His intervention was crucial to prevent NASA from making a mistake in such an important mission,” Ribas emphasizes. “It also denotes – he adds – his credibility, charisma of the character, scientific reliability and an ability to convey his doubts.” And it is very difficult to stop the machine when everything is ready to make an announcement of that magnitude.
“I think his attitude was correct,” biochemist Juli Peretó maintains in the documentary. “Before giving an extraordinary explanation, such as that there is life on Mars, he went to look for ordinary explanations. And he was very well trained, because he had done his doctoral thesis on a whole series of chemical processes closely related to this chemistry, and he knew the details very well. So he was immediately able to suggest a non-biological explanation for what he was seeing.”
Astrobiologist Carlos Briones expresses a similar opinion. “Extraordinary results require extraordinary evidence.” If you want to say – he adds – something as extraordinary as that we have found life on Mars, “you have to have a lot of evidence that comes from different instruments and that is consistent, that all go in the same direction.”
Beyond this decisive intervention by Oró, the film reviews his entire career, that of a person who, since adolescence, was clear that he would dedicate his existence to the study of the origin of life. And that is what he did until his death, which occurred in Barcelona in 2004.
The documentary captures a moment in which Oró himself, in a televised interview, emotionally explains the “most important” moment of his life. It was on Christmas Eve 1959, when he achieved a milestone: the synthesis of adenine from hydrogen cyanide. Oró strongly agreed with Darwin’s maxim that the most complex compounds came from the simplest ones. And that’s what that Christmas 64 years ago showed. “When I saw it, I didn’t believe it. I wondered: how is it possible that nature, from such a toxic product, creates one so important for life?
The scientific impact that there was worldwide was extraordinary. “There were many chemists, there are testimonies, who at that time were looking for adenine,” recalls Antonio Lazcano, former president of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life.
In the words of biochemist Juli Peretó, adenine is one of the letters of the genetic alphabet used by all living beings without exception. “When we see something so universally distributed, the simplest explanation we can give is that its presence was already in the earliest stages of the process, at the beginning of everything.”
Oró will also go down in history for being one of the first scientists to grant comets a determining role in the appearance of life on the early Earth. “It is clearly a mystery how life originated here,” says astronomer Carme Jordi in the documentary. Even she, she adds, “it is not known where so much water has come from.” “There are hypotheses – she continues – that suggest that comets, which are composed of 90% water, have been bombarding the Earth and leaving it all behind. Oró proposed that these organic molecules that comets also have could have been the seed of life on Earth.”
An article he published about it in the journal Nature caught the attention of NASA leaders, who at that time were unaware that, years later, Oró’s knowledge would prevent them from making a sound of ridicule.
The Catalan biochemist left this world without having been able to determine unequivocally how life originated on Earth. However, there were other unknowns that were crystal clear to him. “According to the laws of science, based on observation, experimentation and confirmation of both, life cannot be a singular fact,” he says in the documentary. “If physics is universal, if chemistry is universal and life is based on physical and chemical principles, life cannot be singular. We should not be so pretentious as to consider that the Earth is the only planet that harbors life, and intelligent life,” he concludes.
