The five nucleobases are the building blocks of DNA and RNA\u2014the genetic material inherent to all life on Earth. \u201cThis result further supports the idea that nucleobases could have been present in primitive asteroids and delivered to the early Earth, potentially contributing to the chemical evolution that preceded the origin of life,\u201d co-author Toshiki Koga, a postdoctoral researcher at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, told Gizmodo in an email.<\/p>\n
Analyzing Hayabusa2\u2019s treasure trove <\/p>\n
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched the Hayabusa2 mission<\/a> in 2014, sending a spacecraft on a 186-million-mile (300-million-kilometer) journey to Ryugu. One year after reaching the asteroid<\/a> in 2018, the spacecraft landed on its surface<\/a> and fired a projectile into it. Hayabusa2\u2019s \u201ccatcher\u201d then gathered up the chunks of ejected debris, and the spacecraft carried them back to Earth.<\/p>\n Astronomers have run<\/a> many<\/a> analyses<\/a> of the Ryugu samples since then, but Koga and his colleagues are the first to find all five nucleobases inside them. The researchers studied samples that were collected and curated under strictly controlled conditions and conducted their analysis in a cleanroom to further prevent contamination. They also ran tests to confirm the molecules formed on Ryugu rather than coming from Earth.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was not entirely unexpected, but it was still very exciting to detect all five nucleobases in the Ryugu samples,\u201d he said. Previous research found<\/a> one of the nucleobases, uracil, in the samples, and analyses of other space rocks\u2014such as the asteroid Bennu<\/a>, the Murchison meteorite<\/a>, and the Orgueil meteorite<\/a>\u2014have yielded nucleobases, too.<\/p>\n When Koga\u2019s team compared its findings to those obtained from Bennu, Murchison, and Orgueil, it found significant differences in the relative abundances of the nucleobases. Ryugu contains roughly equal amounts of purine nucleobases (adenine and guanine) and pyrimidine nucleobases (cytosine, thymine, and uracil), whereas Murchison mostly contains purines, and Bennu and Orgueil mostly contain pyrimidines.<\/p>\n \u201cThe relative abundances of purines and pyrimidines provide clues about the chemical conditions under which these molecules formed,\u201d Koga explained. Interestingly, samples from Ryugu, Bennu, and the Orgueil meteorite that contained more ammonia all tended to have a lower ratio of purines to pyrimidines.<\/p>\n \u201c\u200bThis relationship suggests that ammonia may have played an important role in shaping the composition of nucleobases in these materials,\u201d Koga said. \u201cBecause no known formation mechanism predicts such a correlation, it may indicate that previously unrecognized chemical pathways contributed to the formation of nucleobases in the early solar system.\u201d<\/p>\n Zeroing in on the origin of life <\/p>\n Koga hopes that future research will shed light on the potential connection between ammonia concentration and nucleobase formation. This work will involve analyzing a wider range of meteorite samples and conducting laboratory experiments to test possible nucleobase formation pathways under primitive asteroid conditions, he said.<\/p>\n For now, the fact that all five nucleobases have now been detected in samples from two carbon-rich asteroids\u2014Bennu and Ryugu\u2014suggests that these molecules may have been more widespread across the early solar system than scientists previously thought. This supports the idea that some of the most critical building blocks for life were delivered to Earth by asteroids.<\/p>\n With each new asteroid sample they analyze, scientists are piecing together the chemical history of our solar system. Each discovery they make brings us one step closer to understanding what sparked life on our planet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Early Earth was a brutally hot, volcanically active, radiation-bathed wasteland. Somehow amid this hostility, the necessary ingredients for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":528720,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[6949,79163,6626,180084,79,193],"class_list":["post-528719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-asteroids","tag-astrobiology","tag-astronomy","tag-origin-of-life","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=528719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528719\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/528720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Ryugu](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Ryugu-samples.jpg\")
Microscope images of Ryugu samples collected from the first and second touchdown sites of the Hayabusa2 mission, respectively. \u00a9 AXA \/ JAMSTEC <\/p>\n