Abiogenesis
- Heat flows enrich prebiotic building blocks and enhance their reactivity - Naturewww.nature.com Heat flows enrich prebiotic building blocks and enhance their reactivity - Nature
Heat flows through thin, crack-like geo-compartments are shown to purify previously mixed compounds and enhance their reactivity, providing a selective mechanism for separating molecules relevant to the chemical origins of life.
- Diaminopurine in Nonenzymatic RNA Template Copyingwww.biorxiv.org Diaminopurine in Nonenzymatic RNA Template Copying
In the primordial RNA World, before the advent of ribozymes, nonenzymatic template copying would have been essential for the transmission of genetic information. However, the products of chemical copying with the canonical nucleotides are heavily biased towards the incorporation of G and C. Diaminop...
- The Biggest Questions: How did life begin?www.technologyreview.com The Biggest Questions: How did life begin?
AI is helping chemists unpick the mysteries around the origins of life and detect signs of it on other worlds.
- Light-Fueled Primitive Replication and Selection in Biomimetic Chemical Systems
Abstract
The concept of chemically evolvable replicators is central to abiogenesis. Chemical evolvability requires three essential components: energy-harvesting mechanisms for nonequilibrium dissipation, kinetically asymmetric replication and decomposition pathways, and structure-dependent selective templating in the autocatalytic cycles. We observed a UVA light-fueled chemical system displaying sequence-dependent replication and replicator decomposition. The system was constructed with primitive peptidic foldamer components. The photocatalytic formation–recombination cycle of thiyl radicals was coupled with the molecular recognition steps in the replication cycles. Thiyl radical-mediated chain reaction was responsible for the replicator death mechanism. The competing and kinetically asymmetric replication and decomposition processes led to light intensity-dependent selection far from equilibrium. Here, we show that this system can dynamically adapt to energy influx and seeding. The results highlight that mimicking chemical evolution is feasible with primitive building blocks and simple chemical reactions.
- Key building block for life found at Saturn's moon Enceladus: SwRI helped find evidence for phosphorus in the liquid water ocean beneath the moon's icy surfacewww.sciencedaily.com Key building block for life found at Saturn's moon Enceladus
The search for extraterrestrial life in our solar system just got more exciting. A team of scientists has discovered new evidence that the subsurface ocean of Saturn's moon Enceladus contains a key building block for life. The team directly detected phosphorus in the form of phosphates originating f...
- How did life begin? One key ingredient is coming into viewwww.nature.com How did life begin? One key ingredient is coming into view
A Nobel-prizewinning scientist’s team has taken a big step forward in its quest to reconstruct an early-Earth RNA capable of building proteins.
- Jack Szostak (Harvard/HHMI) Part 1: The Origin of Cellular Life on Earth
First part of a three-part series about the origin of life, given by Nobel Prize winner Jack Szostak.
A fascinating topic. The lectures are a bit old, but the information is not outdated.
These lectures come from iBiology, a non-profit that produces educational content and releases it under a creative commons license.
- A prebiotically plausible scenario of an RNA–peptide worldwww.nature.com A prebiotically plausible scenario of an RNA–peptide world - Nature
Peptide synthesis can take place directly on RNA, which suggests how a nucleic acid–protein world might have originated on early Earth.
- Life’s First Molecule Was Protein, Not RNA, New Model Suggestswww.quantamagazine.org Life’s First Molecule Was Protein, Not RNA, New Model Suggests | Quanta Magazine
Which mattered first at the dawn of life: proteins or nucleic acids? Proteins may have had the edge if a theorized process let them grow long enough to become self-replicating catalysts.
Some of my co-workers study the origin of life, and part of their work focuses on pre-biotic peptide synthesis.
I am convinced that nucleotides appeared well before protein synthesis, and that protein synthesis appears at a mature stage during life's evolution, likely catalyzed by ribozymes... So I don't think that pre-biotic peptide synthesis is relevant for the origin of life!
I am making an effort to study the alternative hypotheses in which life has a proteomic origin. My opinion is still unchanged, but I found this article interesting because at least it proposes a somewhat viable model.
Do you have any opinions about the origin of life?
