Compounds found in DNA and RNA have been found in space rocks, too.
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image LabFor decades, astronomers have pondered the idea of panspermia, the theory that life on Earth was delivered here by a meteorite. The concept was once deemed improbable because it raised more questions than answers. But recent close examinations of extraterrestrial objects hint there may be some support for this far-out notion after all.
Researchers from Hokkaido University in Japan have found new evidence that the chemical components necessary to build DNA may have been carried to Earth by carbonaceous meteorites, some of the earliest matter in the solar system, as they report in a study published Tuesday inAlthough these kinds of materials make up about 75 percent of all asteroids, they rarely fall to Earth, limiting how often scientists can study them.
Specifically, several meteorites have been found to contain nucleobases. These chemicals, called the building blocks of life, make up the nucleic acids inside DNA and RNA. Of the five major nucleobases, previous meteorite studies detected only three of them, named adenine, guanine, and uracil. But the present research proves for the first time that two more—cytosine and thymine—can exist within space rocks.
“The detection of all primary DNA and RNA nucleobases in meteorites indicates that these molecules have been supplied to the early Earth before the onset of life,“ says, lead author of the study and an associate professor at Hokkaido University. “In other words, we got information about the inventory of organic molecules related to DNA and RNA before any life arose on the Earth.” One of the oldest specimens in the study clocks in at about 4.
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