NASA has confirmed that dust from the ancient asteroid Bennu contains tryptophan, an amino acid tied both to human mood and to the chemistry that makes life possible. The finding folds a familiar ...

A big question in the origin of life on Earth is why it is based solely on "left-handed" amino acids. Studies on asteroid Bennu's chemical building blocks deepens the mystery. When NASA launched a ...

When researchers finally cracked open the canisters from asteroid Bennu, they were not just sifting through dust. They were staring at a chemical time capsule packed with sugars, amino acids, salt ...

Tryptophan, the essential amino acid behind the Thanksgiving myth that eating turkey can make you sleepy, has been found to exist on Bennu, a small asteroid that swings by our planet about every six ...