Asteroid Bennu contains crucial component of RNA, block of 'life': Study

NASA has discovered Ribose, a crucial component of RNA (ribonucleic acid), and or bio-essential sugars on asteroid Bennu. In a paper published in Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences of United States, scientists revealed that OSIRIS-Rex craft took samples of rocks during its mission for scientific study, which found new insights about Bennu. Discovery of organic material on asteroid, which is building blocks of life, was published in six papers published in journals Science and Science Advances. 

“Asteroids are composed of leftover material from birth of Solar System, and hence contain answers to lingering cosmic mysteries,” planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Flight Center and lead author of one of recent studies on Bennu, Amy Simon said in study.

Bennu is a dark, near-Earth asteroid averaging 4.4 percent of reflectance, which implies, it is collisional remnant of main asteroid belt in-universe. It is kwn as C-complex asteroid due to high carbon content, while B-complex asteroids have bluer spectra, study revealed. refore, this asteroid was found to contain rich silicates, hydrated minerals, organic molecules, magnetite, and sulfides. Scientists launched an OSIRIS-REx mission in year 2016, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer ]to obtain carbonaceous material from asteroid’s surface. 

“One of mission objectives is to compare ground-based Bennu data with resolved surface to help interpret unresolved observations of or asteroids,” scientists said in research.

Bennu was also suspected to belong to Mars and Jupiters’ main asteroid belt that originated in Polana or Eulalia family. earlier, an asteroid Ryugu which was a C-complex asteroid was found to have hydration feature. After OSIRIS-REx mission completed a close-proximity observation of Bennu, scientists studied features of asteroid to find that it contained a messenger molecule RNA (ribonucleic acid) essential for copying genetic instructions from DNA molecule and delivering to molecular factories within ribosomes cells that build proteins needed to carry out life processes. 

“ sugar in DNA (2-deoxyribose) was t detected in any of meteorites analyzed in this study,” said Danny Glavin, a co-author of study at NASA Goddard. “This is important since re could have been a delivery bias of extraterrestrial ribose to early Earth which is consistent with hyposis that RNA evolved first.”

[This is a model of molecular structure of ribose and an im of Murchison meteorite. Ribose and or sugars were found in this meteorite. Credits: Yoshihiro Furukawa/ NASA]

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Contamination due to terrestrial life

“Or important building blocks of life have been found in meteorites previously, including ami acids (components of proteins) and nucleobases (components of DNA and RNA), but sugars have been a missing piece among major building blocks of life,” said Yoshihiro Furukawa of Tohoku University, Japan, in a NASA release. “ research provides first direct evidence of ribose in and delivery of sugar to Earth. extraterrestrial sugar might have contributed to formation of RNA on prebiotic Earth which possibly led to origin of life,” he added.

research is key to decoding origin of life and biology operating a living organism. Discovery of sugars in meteorites signals at contamination due to presence of terrestrial life, scientists in NASA release claimed. discovery was made after analyzing powdered samples using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. “Sugars ranging from 2.3 to 11 parts per billion in NWA 801 and from 6.7 to 180 parts per billion in Murchison were found,” scientists said. 

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(Im Credit: NASA)