(ORDO NEWS) — Japanese scientists have studied tiny regolith samples brought back from the asteroid Ryugu. They found vitamin B3 and uracil, one of the most important substances for any living organisms.
A few years ago, the Japanese probe Hayabusa-2 collected some material from the surface of the near-Earth asteroid (162173) Ryugu, and in 2020 a sealed capsule with valuable samples was delivered to Earth.
Since then, scientists have continued to carefully examine their composition, finding here both water and a variety of organic substances, including amines, carboxylic acids and all 20 basic amino acids.
A new analysis of the “soil” of the asteroid Ryugu has shown that it also contains more complex organic molecules important for life.
The team of Hokkaido University professor Yasuhiro Oba found in it uracil – one of the four nucleotides that make up RNA molecules – and nicotinic acid, that is, vitamin B 3, which plays an important role in many metabolic processes.
The capsule that arrived from Ryugu contained only 5.4 grams of the substance, so a few milligrams of samples had to be dispensed with for the study.
To extract nucleotides and organics, they were dissolved in hot water and then in hydrochloric acid, after which liquid chromatography and mass spectrometric analysis were performed.
He showed that the samples contained small amounts of uracil and nicotinic acid: 6-32 ppb and 49-99 ppb, respectively.
The authors do not exclude the presence of other nucleotides and vitamins, which could not be noticed due to the small amounts of the sample.
All this serves as further evidence in favor of the hypothesis that the key “bricks of life” were once brought to Earth from space, on board asteroids and other celestial bodies that were actively bombarding the young planet.
“Nucleotides and vitamins have been found in some carbonaceous meteorites before, but the question has always been whether this is due to contamination of the substance when it hits the Earth,” said Professor Oba.
“But since Hayabusa-2 collected samples directly from the asteroid Ryugu and delivered them in pressurized capsules, we can exclude the possibility of contamination here.”
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