{"id":209141,"date":"2025-03-19T09:25:23","date_gmt":"2025-03-19T14:25:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/asteroid-bennu-holds-traces-of-ancient-water-and-maybe-lifes-origins"},"modified":"2025-03-19T09:25:23","modified_gmt":"2025-03-19T14:25:23","slug":"asteroid-bennu-holds-traces-of-ancient-water-and-maybe-lifes-origins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/asteroid-bennu-holds-traces-of-ancient-water-and-maybe-lifes-origins","title":{"rendered":"Asteroid Bennu Holds Traces of Ancient Water \u2014 And Maybe Life\u2019s Origins"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/asteroid-bennu-holds-traces-of-ancient-water-and-maybe-lifes-origins3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Scientists at Berkeley Lab are unraveling the mysteries of Bennu, a 4.5-billion-year-old asteroid, using cutting-edge technology.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>The asteroid harbors traces of ancient briny water, salty minerals, and even organic molecules \u2013 potential clues to life\u2019s origins. Researchers are using X-ray and electron microscopy to analyze these space rocks at the atomic level, revealing how early planetary systems formed. Even more exciting, they\u2019ve found amino acids.<\/p>\n<p>&lt;div class=\u201d\u201d&gt; &lt;div class=\u201d\u201d&gt;&lt;br \/&gt;Amino acids are a set of organic compounds used to build proteins. There are about 500 naturally occurring known amino acids, though only 20 appear in the genetic code. Proteins consist of one or more chains of amino acids called polypeptides. The sequence of the amino acid chain causes the polypeptide to fold into a shape that is biologically active. The amino acid sequences of proteins are encoded in the genes. Nine proteinogenic amino acids are called \u201cessential\u201d for humans because they cannot be produced from other compounds by the human body and so must be taken in as food.&lt;br \/&gt;&lt;\/div&gt; &lt;\/div&gt;<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scientists at Berkeley Lab are unraveling the mysteries of Bennu, a 4.5-billion-year-old asteroid, using cutting-edge technology. The asteroid harbors traces of ancient briny water, salty minerals, and even organic molecules \u2013 potential clues to life\u2019s origins. Researchers are using X-ray and electron microscopy to analyze these space rocks at the atomic level, revealing how early [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1506,412],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-209141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-food","category-genetics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209141\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}