NASA's asteroid samples contain organic compounds and minerals that may have seeded early Earth with life's building blocks.

This image illustrates the general structure of an amino acid.The central carbon ... that determines the specific amino acid. . (Image: Nanowerk) There are 20 standard amino acids that are commonly ...

Scientists have detected organic compounds and minerals necessary for life in the samples collected by the OSIRIS-REx mission ...

Scientists have discovered numerous organic compounds in samples from the asteroid Bennu, including key amino acids and the ...

Some amino acids can be built in two ways that mirror each other, like a pair of right and left hands. Life on Earth uses the ...

Bennu’s parent asteroid, which formed around 4.5 billion years ago, seems to have been home to pockets of liquid water.

Two science teams pored over samples from the B-type asteroid Bennu, finding chemicals linked to the beginnings of life and ...

The Bennu discovery helps to illuminate how, early in the Solar System’s history, asteroids and other planetary building blocks were not just “lumps of stone and ice, but active ‘living’ objects”, ...

Scientists have long believed they understood how life’s genetic code evolved, but new research upends that assumption. By analyzing ancient protein sequences, researchers discovered that early life p ...

Amino acids are organic compounds composed mainly of nitrogen, carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. Your body needs 20 different amino acids to grow and function properly. While all 20 of these are ...

The building blocks for life, including salts, organic matter and amino acids have been found in samples returned to Earth ...