We Found the Building Blocks of Life Hiding in Asteroid Dust

[Zorro]

Pristine rock samples taken from asteroid Ryugu are home to uracil, a critical component of RNA.

Back in 2010, Japan’s space agency JAXA completed one of the biggest milestones in the history of space exploration: It collected samples from an asteroid and brought them back to Earth. A decade later, the agency’s Hayabusa2 mission did the same thing with another asteroid called Ryugu—with a vastly more ambitious goal of bringing back an even bigger cache of extraterrestrial rock samples. For the past few years, scientists on Earth have been uncovering the chemical secrets embedded within these samples and whether there’s anything we can glean about the origins of the solar system and its planets. As it turns out, we’ve learned that Ryugu is home to a very special compound that’s a building block of genetic information itself.

On Tuesday, Japanese scientists revealed they discovered within the Ryugu samples the presence of uracil, a component that’s critical to the makeup of RNA. They also discovered nicotinic acid, better known as Vitamin B3 or niacin, which is important for allowing organisms to run metabolic functions.

Both materials have been previously discovered in carbon-rich meteorites that have impacted Earth. But, “this is the first time they have been detected in any returned samples from space,” Yasuhiro Oba from Hokkaido University, who led the new study, told The Daily Beast in an email. “Based on this finding, we can say uracil is indeed present in space.” The findings were reported in Nature Communications.

The new discovery arrives at a time when scientists are trying to piece together a better understanding of how the building blocks to life first originated on Earth. One of the most popular theories among researchers these days is that during the formation of Earth, asteroids were responsible for bringing in water, organic molecules, nucleic acids, and other compounds that form the constituents of proteins and genes and cells.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/uracil-building-block-for-rna-found-in-asteroid-ryugu-samples

[EYESORE 9001]

1. In this layperson's wild-ass estimation

the asteroid theory of how essential organic compounds arrived on earth is the most likely one. Again, I’m no astrophysicist.

[PJMcK]

3. Its called panspermia, I think

The building blocks of life are transferred across space and deposited on a planet that could support life. It would take a lot of different things coming together but the universe is big and old. Rare events occur all the time.

I’m a layman, too, but I love reading about science, at least until they start with the math!

[EYESORE 9001]

4. Oh, yeah...the math...

I never trusted them mathletic types…packing around that paper with a grid pattern printed on it…it’s like they were plotting something…

[2naSalit]

2. So...

What if those elements were already here? I understand the search for these things outside our planetary systems but I wonder if they should be looking at a different vector.

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

5. cool

[Earth-shine]

6. An important point is that the building blocks of life are everywhere.

Life can be anywhere.