A small hemolithin protein made up mostly of glycine and amino acids:
It also had oxygen, lithium and iron atoms at its ends—an arrangement never seen before. The team’s paper has not yet been peer reviewed, but once the findings are confirmed, their discovery will add another piece to the puzzle that surrounds the development of life on Earth. Proteins are considered to be essential building blocks for the development of living things, and finding one on a meteorite bolsters theories that suggest either life, or something very close to it, came to Earth from elsewhere in space.
Proteins are considered by chemists to be quite complex, which means a lot of things would have to happen by chance for protein formation. For hemolithin to have formed naturally in the configuration found would require glycine to form first, perhaps on the surface of grains of space dust. After that, heat by way of molecular clouds might have induced units of glycine to begin linking into polymer chains, which at some point, could evolve into fully formed proteins. The researchers note that the atom groupings on the tips of the protein form an iron oxide that has been seen in prior research to absorb photons—a means of splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen, thereby producing an energy source that would also be necessary for the development of life.
Bob Yirka, “Protein discovered inside a meteorite” at Phys.org
But then what are the chances that some of this stuff came from Earth in the first place? If there is indeed a road, the traffic might be going both ways.
See also: Physicist Rob Sheldon Thinks Extraterrestrial Origin Of Life Is Unfairly Dismissed