This may seem externally, but it is possible that some early components of life were taken to Earth on a meteorite. Recent research has shown that all five basic building blocks of DNA have been found in meteorites.
To be clear, it is not that DNA has been found on a rock from the outer location. Instead, the result is that each of the five basic compounds that form DNA and RNA, called nucleobes, have been found in meteorite samples. Earlier, only three of these nucleobes were found on meteorites, but recent research has identified the last two.
“Now we have evidence that the entire set of nucleobes used in life can be available on Earth today, when life is emerged,” said Danny Glavin, one of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. statement,
The two outstanding nucleobes were cytosine and thymine. These were difficult to identify than the other three nucleobes (adenin, guanine, and urasils) because they have a more delicate structure that is easily broken by the process of collecting and analyzing samples. NASA has described the traditional method of analysis of these samples as making “meteorite tea”, in which small samples from a meteorite are put into warm liquid to remove the samples and study the water solution.
“We study these water extracts because they contain good accessories, ancient organic molecules that could have major construction blocks for the origin of life on Earth,” Glavin explained.
But two remaining nucleobes were required to identify the more careful method, using cold water and more sensitive analysis process. “This group has managed a technique that is like cold brow compared to hot tea and is able to exclude more delicate compounds,” another co-writer, Jason Dwarkin explained. “I was surprised that he saw Cytocin, which is very fragile.”
What materials for life actually came to Earth on a meteorite, there is still an open question. By interaction of organic compounds, life can also develop from a very young planet Earth's primardial soup. But this research opens more possibilities for future research in this subject.
“It is adding more and more pieces; the meteorites now found sugars and hideouts,” Dwarkin said. “It is exciting to see progress in the creation of original molecules of biology from space.”
Published in research journal Nature,
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