Houston, we have a podcast. Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space

Center episode 253, The Blueprint of Life. I'm Gary Jordan, and I'll be your host today.

On this podcast, we bring the experts, scientists, engineers, and astronauts, ultimately

know what's going on in the world of human spaceflight. Have you ever wondered where life

began? Like, truly began. Well, we may have just found the answer for the original blueprint

of life through asteroids. Using analyses, an international team joined by NASA researchers

recently made this discovery of the last two of the five informational units of DNA and

RNA that had yet to be discovered in samples from meteorites. This research discovery

points to more evidence than ever before that a complete set of nucleobases used in life

today could have been available when life first emerged. As scientists state, it's unlikely

for DNA to have ever been formed in a meteorite, but this finding does reveal that genetics

are available for transmission, and they have served as the instructional manual of life's

design on Earth as we know it. To talk more in depth about this topic, we have astrobiologist

and co-author of a paper on this research, Dr. Daniel Glavin, goes by Danny, joining us

from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Danny looks for the building

blocks of life in extraterrestrial materials, including meteorites, asteroids, comets,

and other interplanetary dust particles. He earned a BS in physics from the University

of California at San Diego in 1996, and a PhD in Earth Sciences from the Scripps Institute

of Oceanography in 2001. He joined the 2002 to 2003 Antarctic Search for Meteorites

Team and spent six weeks searching for meteorites in Antarctica. In 2003, Dr. Glavin joined

the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Glavin is a co-investigator on NASA's

OSIRIS REX asteroid sample return mission and is leading the team that will study the

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