Asteroid Contains Building Blocks of Life – Japanese Research

A team of nine Japanese scientists found in samples from the asteroid Ryugu the five bases which form the building blocks of DNA and RNA, these molecules present in all living beings on Earth and which, assembled in sequences, constitute their genetic code.

The researchers identified the five nitrogen bases (or “nucleobases”) of life, represented by the letters A/G/C/T/U, namely adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C), thymine (T) and uracil (U) in a material taken from space, therefore free from any terrestrial contamination. Indeed, the 5.4 grams of dust from the asteroid Ryugu were brought back at the end of 2020 in an airtight capsule by the Japanese probe Hayabusa-2, launched in 2014….