For the first time, a complete set of DNA building blocks has been found in meteorites.
Miscellaneous / / April 27, 2022
This discovery brought scientists closer to answering the question of the origin of life on Earth.
Meteorites may contain some of the nitrogenous bases from which DNA and RNA were formed. This has been known to scientists since the 1960s. However, until recently, only three of the five required components could be found in extraterrestrial rocks. New studyIdentifying the wide diversity of extraterrestrial purine and pyrimidine nucleobases in carbonaceous meteorites, published in the scientific journal Nature Communications, confirmed the discovery of all five bases for the first time.
Nitrogenous bases are organic compounds, derivatives of pyrimidine and purine, which are part of nucleic acids. These include adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C), which are part of both DNA and RNA, as well as thymine (T), which is found only in DNA, and uracil (U), which is found only in RNA.
Previously, scientists were able to identify only guanine, adenine and uracil in meteorites. The presence of cytosine and thymine was also assumed, but it was only now possible to confirm their presence, thanks to the analysis of three meteorites of the carbonaceous chondrite type - the Murchison meteorite (Australia) and meteorites from lakes Murray (USA) and Tagish (Canada).
They were studied by a group of researchers from the University of Hokkaido (Japan) and NASA. Using a new sample extraction and analysis technique, they identified all five basic base variants, as well as their structural isomers.
In part, this discovery confirms the possibility of the origin of life on our planet thanks to a "send from outer space." However, scientists cannot say this unambiguously, since, according to the same logic, many planets close to the Earth could also be inhabited.
Nevertheless, the confirmation of the complete set of DNA building blocks in extraterrestrial rocks opens many new avenues for scientists to study the process of the origin of life.
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