Prepared by: Mustafa Al-Zoubi
Scientists from Japan’s Hokkaido University found two organic compounds essential for living organisms in samples taken from the asteroid Ryugu, namely uracil and niacin, in rocks obtained by the Japanese Space Agency’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft from two locations on the planet in 2019, supporting the idea that some of the crucial components The emergence of life arrived on Earth on rocks from space billions of years ago.
Uracil is one of the chemical building blocks of RNA, a molecule that carries directions for building and operating organisms.
Niacin, also known as vitamin B3 or nicotinic acid, is essential for metabolism.
Ryugu samples were transported 250 million kilometers to Earth and returned to the surface of our planet in a sealed capsule that landed in 2020 in remote areas of Australia for analysis in Japan.
Scientists have long thought about the conditions necessary for the emergence of life after the formation of the earth about 4.5 billion years ago.
The new findings fit well with the hypothesis that bodies such as comets, asteroids and meteorites that landed early on Earth seeded the young planet with compounds that helped pave the way for the first microbes.
Scientists have previously discovered key organic molecules in carbon-rich meteorites found on Earth. But there was the question of whether these space rocks were contaminated by exposure to the Earth’s environment after landing?
Their main finding is that uracil and niacin, both of which are biologically important, are present in extraterrestrial environments and may have been supplied to the early Earth as a component of asteroids and meteorites.
RNA is a molecule present in all living cells, vital in the coding, regulation and activity of genes.
Niacin is important in supporting metabolism, and can help produce the energy that powers living organisms.
The researchers extracted uracil, niacin, and some other organic compounds in the Ryugu samples by soaking the material in hot water and then running the analyses.
