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“This group has managed a technique that is more like cold brew than hot tea and is able to pull out more delicate compounds,” explained another co-author, Jason Dworkin. “We study these water extracts since they contain the good stuff, ancient organic molecules that could have been key building blocks for the origin of life on Earth,” explained Glavin.īut the two remaining nucleobases required a more careful method to be identified, using cool water and a more sensitive analysis process. NASA describes the traditional method of analysis of these samples as making a “meteorite tea,” in which small samples from a meteorite are put into hot liquid so that the samples are extracted and the watery solution can be studied. These were harder to identify than the other three nucleobases (adenine, guanine, and uracil) because they have a more delicate structure which is easily broken down by the process of collecting and analyzing samples. The two outstanding nucleobases were cytosine and thymine. “We now have evidence that the complete set of nucleobases used in life today could have been available on Earth when life emerged,” said one of the authors, Danny Glavin of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, in a statement.
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The nucleobases are represented by structural diagrams with hydrogen atoms as white spheres, carbon as black, nitrogen as blue, and oxygen as red. Conceptual image of meteoroids delivering nucleobases to ancient Earth. Previously, only three of these nucleobases had been found on meteorites, but recent research has identified the final two. Rather, the result is that each of the five basic compounds which make up DNA and RNA, called nucleobases, have been found in meteorite samples. To be clear, it isn’t that DNA has been found on a rock from outer space. Recent research has shown that all five of the basic building blocks of DNA have been found in meteorites. It might sound outlandish, but it’s possible that some of the earliest components of life were carried to Earth on a meteorite.