{"id":230995,"date":"2026-02-10T02:44:01","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T08:44:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/building-blocks-of-life-discovered-in-bennu-asteroid-rewrite-origin-story"},"modified":"2026-02-10T02:44:01","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T08:44:01","slug":"building-blocks-of-life-discovered-in-bennu-asteroid-rewrite-origin-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/building-blocks-of-life-discovered-in-bennu-asteroid-rewrite-origin-story","title":{"rendered":"Building blocks of life discovered in Bennu asteroid rewrite origin story"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/building-blocks-of-life-discovered-in-bennu-asteroid-rewrite-origin-story.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Amino acids, the building blocks necessary for life, were previously found in samples of 4.6-billion-year-old rocks from an asteroid called Bennu, delivered to Earth in 2023 by NASA\u2019s OSIRIS-REx mission. How those amino acids\u2014the molecules that create proteins and peptides in DNA\u2014formed in space was a mystery, but new research led by Penn State scientists shows they could have originated in an icy-cold, radioactive environment at the dawn of Earth\u2019s solar system.<\/p>\n<p>According to the researchers, who published new findings in the <a href=\"http:\/\/doi.org\/10.1073\/pnas.2517723123\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/i><\/a>, some amino acids in the asteroid Bennu samples likely formed in a different way than was previously thought, in the harsh conditions of the early solar system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Amino acids, the building blocks necessary for life, were previously found in samples of 4.6-billion-year-old rocks from an asteroid called Bennu, delivered to Earth in 2023 by NASA\u2019s OSIRIS-REx mission. How those amino acids\u2014the molecules that create proteins and peptides in DNA\u2014formed in space was a mystery, but new research led by Penn State scientists [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-230995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230995","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\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230995\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}