The Stuff of Life Came from Outer Space

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All of the bases in DNA and RNA have now been found in meteorites
More of the ingredients for life have been found in meteorites. Space rocks that fell to Earth within the last century contain the five bases that store information in DNA and RNA, scientists report April 26 in Nature Communications...

Identifying the wide diversity of extraterrestrial purine and pyrimidine nucleobases in carbonaceous meteorites
The lack of pyrimidine diversity in meteorites remains a mystery since prebiotic chemical models and laboratory experiments have predicted that these compounds can also be produced from chemical precursors found in meteorites. Here we report the detection of nucleobases in three carbonaceous meteorites using state-of-the-art analytical techniques optimized for small-scale quantification of nucleobases down to the range of parts per trillion (ppt)...

Life on Earth may have begun in hostile hot springs
Understanding how complex molecules formed on our planet could guide the search for life elsewhere in the solar system...