The building blocks for life have just been found in a very interesting place

Japanese scientists have discovered one of the fundamental building blocks needed to create life living on the Ryugu asteroid according to recently published research. 

In 2014, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency launched its Hayabusa-2 space probe on a mission to intercept Ryugu asteroid and collect a sample from its surface. 

Hayabusa-2 successfully landed on Ryugu and was able to complete its mission, collecting a relatively large sample of material from the space rock’s surface. 

It was from the material gathered that researchers were able to study 5.4 grams of rock and dust in which they discovered one of life’s fundamental building blocks according to France 24. 

Among the many things found was a chemical compound known as uracil, one of the building blocks needed to create ribonucleic acid, often abbreviated as RNA. 

The discovery of uracil on an asteroid floating in the void of space is particularly important because of how it will change our understanding of life and its beginnings in our wider universe. 

“The finding lends weight to a longstanding theory that life on Earth may have been seeded from outer space when asteroids crashed into our planet carrying fundamental elements,” wrote journalists from France 24. 

Uracil wasn’t the only chemical compound discovered among the sample studied from Ryugu, another important vitamin for sustaining life was also found according to CNN.

Photo by Twitter @ComicaI

Vitamin B3, also known as niacin, was found in the sample taken from Ryugu, which CNN’s Ashley Strickland noted is “a key cofactor for metabolism in living organisms.”

“Other biological molecules were found in the sample as well,” wrote the project's lead researcher Yasuhiro Oba in a statement on his team’s findings.

“A selection of amino acids, amines, and carboxylic acids, which are found in proteins and metabolism,” were also discovered in the Ryugu sample according to Oba.

Oba and his team published their findings in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications where they noted the Hayabusa-2 delivered a “nearly pristine” sample from which they were able to make their discoveries. 

“The new findings fit well with the hypothesis that bodies like comets, asteroids, and meteorites that bombarded early Earth seeded the young planet with compounds that helped pave the way for the first microbes,” wrote Will Dunham of The Japan Times. 

The current prevailing theory on how life was seeded on Earth dictates that roughly 3.5-3.8 billion years ago the Earth was showered with comments and asteroids that carried with them the building blocks of life according to NASA. 

“Although the exact process by which life formed on Earth is not well understood,” wrote NASA on its Near Earth Object Studies website, “the origin of life requires the presence of carbon-based molecules, liquid water, and an energy source.”

“Because some Near-Earth Objects contain carbon-based molecules and water ice, collisions of these objects with Earth have significant agents of biologic as well as geologic change,” the NASA explanation continued, which many believe is what started life on Earth.