NASA announced the discovery of "life's ingredients" from samples of the ancient asteroid Bennu, collected by its
OSIRIS-REx Spacecraft. The latest discoveries include sugars that are essential for the creation of life forms, ancient
"space-gum" never found before on asteroids and supernova dust.
This, along with previous discoveries of amino acids and nucleobases, indicated that the components that make up
biological molecules were naturally occurring in the solar system, according to the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration's blog post.
"Combined with previous detections of amino acids and nucleobases, we see that life’s ingredients were widespread
throughout the solar system," the NASA Solar System 'X' account wrote in its post.
This discovery came to light due to scientists led by Yoshihiro Furukawa of Tohoku University in Japan, who wrote about
their findings in the Nature Geoscience journal.
They found ribose (a primary ingredient for the formation of RNA) and glucose for the very first time in an
extraterrestrial sample, which, when coupled with amino acids and nucleobases indicated that all the major building
blocks of RNA could be found on the asteroid.
Glucose's discovery is significant due to it being an energy source that powers biological life on earth.
"Ribose in RNA is used in the molecule’s sugar-phosphate “backbone” that connects a string of information-carrying
nucleobases," the blog post said.
When juxtaposed with the absence of deoxyribose, a key component of DNA, the discovery seems to provide more credence to
the hypothesis that RNA was more necessary for creation of life than DNA, as indicated by its detection on an ancient
“Present day life is based on a complex system organized primarily by three types of functional biopolymers: DNA, RNA,
and proteins,” Furukawa said.
“However, early life may have been simpler. RNA is the leading candidate for the first functional biopolymer because it
can store genetic information and catalyze many biological reactions," he added.
A second paper from the Nature Astronomy journal Scott Sandford at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon
Valley and Zack Gainsforth of the University of California, Berkeley, noted the detection of a gum-like substance found
on a space rock for the first time.
Sandford dubbed it a "space plastic" due to its similar chemical structure to polyurethane. It was described as a
polymer-like material rich in nitrogen and oxygen. Scientists hypothesised that the complex molecules in this substance
may have spurred the creation of early life forms.
A third paper in the journal Nature Astronomy, led by Ann Nguyen of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston discovered
samples that had six-times the amount of supernova dust than any other studied sample before it.
"These fragments retain a higher abundance of organic matter and presolar silicate grains, which are known to be easily
destroyed by aqueous alteration in asteroids," Nguyen said.
"Their preservation in the Bennu samples was a surprise and illustrates that some material escaped alteration in the
parent body. Our study reveals the diversity of presolar materials that the parent accreted as it was forming," the