US EditionAsteroid Bennu Carries All the Ingredients for Life as We Know It
Samples from asteroid Bennu contain all RNA nucleobases and ribose sugar, supporting theories that asteroids may have delivered life's building blocks to Earth, researchers say.
- This year, Yoshihiro Furukawa and colleagues reported finding ribose and other sugars in asteroid Bennu samples, while deoxyribose was not detected, completing RNA components in primitive asteroids in Nature Geoscience.
- OSIRIS-REx returned samples that include 121 grams sent to labs worldwide, with early studies finding water, carbon, amino acids, five nucleobases, phosphates, and earlier this year salts.
- Using an infrared microscope, the team selected carbon-rich grains before crushing a sample portion and applying gas chromatography–mass spectrometry, identifying ribose, lyxose, xylose, arabinose, glucose, and galactose.
- The detection bolsters the RNA world hypothesis, since scientists say asteroids could have delivered life's prerequisites and ribose's presence supports RNA as the first biopolymer.
- Bennu's unusual presolar dust abundance means its parent asteroid formed in a dust-rich region, and less-altered pockets preserve organic matter, while brines on Enceladus and Ceres suggest similar chemistry elsewhere.
14 Articles
14 Articles
The US space agency (NASA) revealed on Tuesday that it found ammonia acids and precursors of ribonucleic acid (RNA) on the asteroid Bennu, which provides new clues for scientists about the formation of the solar system and the origins of life.
In a First, NASA Scientists Find Life-Critical Sugars, ‘Gum,’ And Stardust in Asteroid Bennu
For the first time in an extraterrestrial sample, scientists detected ribose, which is a five-carbon sugar vital for RNA, and glucose, the six-carbon sugar that powers cells on Earth.
NASA's asteroid sample just revealed new clues to life's origins
NASA's asteroid sample has revealed new chemical evidence that scientists say sharpens the picture of how the solar system formed and how the ingredients for life spread through space.Three studies published Tuesday in Nature Geoscience and Nature Astronomy examine pristine material the OSIRIS-Rex mission collected from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu and delivered to Earth in 2023. Researchers report finding important sugars for biology, a previo…
(Tokyo = Yonhap News) Correspondent Kyung Soo-hyun = Samples taken from the asteroid Bennu, which is estimated to have formed 4.5 billion years ago, contain glucose and...
Asteroid Bennu carries all the ingredients for life as we know it
We knew from prior analyses that a distant asteroid sampled in 2020 carried all but one of the molecules needed to kick-start life, and researchers have just found the missing ingredient: sugar
Asteroid Bennu samples support RNA World hypothesis
New Delhi: A close examination of the samples returned from the asteroid Bennu by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission in 2023 has revealed that all the ingredients necessary to form ribonucleic acid (RNA). What is crucial here is that while ribose, the sugar needed to make RNA was discovered, deoxyribose, the sugar necessary to make deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) was not. The RNA world hypothesis is a leading theory about the origin of life on Earth, proposi…
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