A team of scientists has discovered essential building blocks for life in asteroid Bennu's fragments, encompassing all five nucleobases and 14 amino acids critical for proteins. However, the amino acids exhibit approximately equal 'left-handed' and 'right-handed' structures, challenging the notion that similar asteroids could have introduced life on Earth. Additionally, Bennu's materials indicate ancient saline environments, potentially favorable for life's chemical precursors. In parallel, a study found that certain bat genomes exhibit immune adaptations which could have developed alongside their evolution of powered flight, suggesting intriguing links between metabolism and viral resistance.
"Having these brines there, along with simple organic stuff, may have kick-started [the process of] making much more complicated and interesting organics like the nucleobases."
"The material from Bennu is rich in salts created billions of years ago, probably when watery ponds on its parent asteroid evaporated and left behind a crust of minerals."
"Amino acids in living organisms tend to have a 'left-handed' structure. Those on Bennu, however, contain nearly equal amounts of these structures and their 'right-handed', mirror-image forms."
"Many of these adaptations were shared by every species researchers studied, suggesting that they emerged in a common ancestor of all bats - and at around the same point that fossil evidence has suggested they evolved powered flight."
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