On Monday, a newspaper announced that all four DNA bases had been found on an asteroid, generating a lot of headlines. But many headlines omitted a key word needed to put the finding in context: “again.” The paper itself cites similar results from 2011, and the following years have seen various confirmations and more rigorous studies. The new work was less notable for showing that we had found these bases in Ryugu than for solving a previous mystery: Despite their presence in many other asteroid samples, earlier studies had failed to detect them there.
However, outside the headlines, the new work provides some interesting details, as it may answer an important question: how these bases got there in the first place. Understanding this may be important to get a better picture of how the raw materials for life first arrived on Earth.
Locations are being searched
Let’s start with the details of what the researchers found. Both DNA and RNA, two nucleic acids used by life, share a similar structure. It consists of the backbone, a chain that alternates between sugars and phosphates that are all chemically linked together. While the specific sugars differ between DNA and RNA, the chains differ only in length; Otherwise, the backbone of every DNA or RNA molecule is the same.
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