There has been some fascinating new research focused on the origins of life. Intriguingly, a large part of its focus looks at the conditions of early Earth as well as space, to determine if building blocks of life were originally extraterrestrial.
Two dozen geologists, microbiologists, and other scientists will sail in April to the Atlantis Massif, a 14,000-foot underwater mountain rising from the floor of the Atlantic Ocean.
Adjacent to the mid-Atlantic Ridge, the Atlantis Massif is a tectonic window, where the tectonic plates spread apart and pull the earth’s deeper layers to the surface. By drilling at tectonic windows, scientists can examine parts of the earth’s inner structure that would otherwise be inaccessible.“It’s almost a way of cheating the system,” said Jason Sylvan, a biological oceanographer at Texas A&M University.Researchers plan to take samples from the new depths to investigate whether a special mix of rock and water could have spawned life on Earth and possibly other planets.
Another team of researchers led by Michel Farizon of the University of Lyon and Tilmann Märk of the University of Innsbruck has now made a significant discovery related to the smallest occurring amino acid, glycine, a molecule that has been observed several times extraterrestrially in recent years.
Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins in all lifeforms. One of the prerequisites for the emergence of life is the abiotic (i.e., not caused by living beings) chemical production and polymerization of amino acids.
“Our study sheds light on the less likely unimolecular scenario for the formation of such amino acid chains in the extreme conditions of space,” says Michel Farizon. “We were able to show that peptide chain growth occurs through unimolecular reactions in excited cluster ions, without the need for contact with an additional partner such as dust or ice.”The current work provides evidence that the first step toward the origin of life can occur in the highly unlikely conditions of space. “The study is an important milestone on the route to understanding the origins of life. The results will serve as a basis for further research in this field,” Michel Farizon and Tilmann Märk are convinced.
Dustin Trail, an associate professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Rochester in New York, and Thomas McCollom, a research associate at the University of Colorado Boulder, recently published a paper in Science that suggests there is a link between certain metals and the emergence of chemicals associated with life.
The pair focused on the possible composition of the early Earth, which would be substantially different than it is today.
Many origin-of-life researchers, for instance, consider copper a likely component in the chemistry that could have led to life. But Trail and McCollom did not find evidence that copper would have been abundant under the constraints in their analysis.One metal they did test that may have been available in high concentrations was manganese. While it is rarely considered in origin-of-life scenarios, today manganese helps the body form bones and assists enzymes in breaking down carbohydrates and cholesterol.“Our research shows that metals like manganese may function as important links between the ‘solid’ Earth and emerging biological systems at Earth’s surface,” Trail says.Trail says the research will help scientists studying the origin of life to input more concrete data into their experiments and models.“Experiments designed with this information in mind will result in a better understanding of how life originated.”
For those of you who enjoy science, here is an interesting review of early Earth and early life co-evolution.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY