RNA building block uracil recovered from near-Earth asteroid Ryugu
Japanese mission returns pristine sample to bolster idea that prebiotic chemicals could have been delivered by meteorites
Samples collected from an asteroid have been found to contain organic molecules, including uracil, a building block of RNA. This suggests that the chemicals that kickstarted life on Earth could have been delivered on meteorites.
A remarkable Japanese mission to the asteroid Ryugu in 2020 returned 5.4g of material for lab analysis, free of earthly contamination. Asteroids were believed to contain organic chemicals and water from when the solar system was forming, around 4.6 billion years ago.