Curiosity
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A 4.5-billion-year-old space rock just spelled out the entire genetic alphabet.
Japanese scientists confirmed that samples from asteroid Ryugu contain all five nucleobases: adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine and uracil. Those are the molecules that write the code in DNA and RNA.
In 2023, researchers had only found uracil. Now they’ve found the full set.
JAXA’s Hayabusa2 brought the samples home in 2020, just 5.4 grams of pristine asteroid material. Because it was collected in space, Earth contamination can’t explain the result.
It’s not a one-off, either. NASA’s Bennu samples turned up all five in 2025.
Life’s raw ingredients may have been scattered across the early Solar System, waiting for a ride to Earth.
Source: ScienceDaily / The Conversation, Kliti Grice (Curtin University); Koga et al., “A complete set of canonical nucleobases in the carbonaceous asteroid (162173) Ryugu,” Nature Astronomy, 2026, DOI: 10.1038/s41550-026-02791-z
Japanese scientists confirmed that samples from asteroid Ryugu contain all five nucleobases: adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine and uracil. Those are the molecules that write the code in DNA and RNA.
In 2023, researchers had only found uracil. Now they’ve found the full set.
JAXA’s Hayabusa2 brought the samples home in 2020, just 5.4 grams of pristine asteroid material. Because it was collected in space, Earth contamination can’t explain the result.
It’s not a one-off, either. NASA’s Bennu samples turned up all five in 2025.
Life’s raw ingredients may have been scattered across the early Solar System, waiting for a ride to Earth.
Source: ScienceDaily / The Conversation, Kliti Grice (Curtin University); Koga et al., “A complete set of canonical nucleobases in the carbonaceous asteroid (162173) Ryugu,” Nature Astronomy, 2026, DOI: 10.1038/s41550-026-02791-z
