A team of scientists reported Thursday they have discovered the presence of sugar lurking some 26,000 light-years from Earth in the center of the Milky Way.

The team used the National Science Foundations 40-foot (12-meter) radio telescope on Kitt Peak, Arizona to spot the sugar molecule, glycolaldehyde, in a large cloud of gas and dust near the center of our galaxy.

A "ball-and-stick" representation of the chemical structure of glycolaldehyde. The atoms and connecting-bond lengths are not to scale.

Glycolaldehyde (see diagram above) is formed from eight atoms -- carbon, oxygen and hydrogen -- and can combine with other molecules to form sugars such as ribose and glucose. Those in turn form the building blocks of nucleic acids such as RNA and DNA.

"The discovery of this sugar molecule in a cloud from which new stars are forming means it is increasingly likely that the chemical precursors to life are formed in such clouds long before planets develop around the stars," said Jan M. Hollis, of NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, in a statement.

Hollis made the discovery in May while working with Frank J. Lovas, of the University of Illinois and Philip R. Jewell, of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia. The team submitted its findings to the Astrophysical Journal Letters.