Chemists claim to have solved riddle of how life began on Earth

Phys.org

A team of chemists working at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, at Cambridge in the UK believes they have solved the mystery of how it was possible for life to begin on Earth over four billion years ago. In their paper published in the journal Nature Chemistry, the team describes how they were able to map reactions that produced two and three-carbon sugars, amino acids, ribonucleotides and glycerol—the material necessary for metabolism and for creating the building blocks of proteins and ribonucleic acid molecules and also for allowing for the creation of lipids that form cell membranes.

Wait, what!!?!

they believe they have found a way to show that everything necessary for life to evolve could have done so from just hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen cyanide and ultraviolet light and that those building blocks could have all existed at the same time—in their paper, they report that using just those three basic ingredients they were able to produce more than 50 nucleic acids—precursors to DNA and RNA molecules.

They note that early meteorites carried with them ingredients that would react with nitrogen already in the atmosphere, producing a lot of hydrogen cyanide. By dissolving in water, it could have very easily come into contact with hydrogen sulfide, while being exposed to ultraviolet light from the sun. And that, they claim, would have been all that was needed to get things going.

Pretty exciting news, if it is confirmed by other scientists this shows a working (theoretical) beginning of life, abiogenesis anyone?

Abstract of paper: nature.com

Wait till they make one of their own, and evolve it artificially....Hmm, while life can come out of a packet, they still need water to make the soup.

a reply to: Elton

I see this as the beginning of Trans-humanism. After you take the God factor out, what left SHOULD be spiritual development.

I wonder how the Masses who believe that we were made from clay and ribs will take this? I know the Atheist will just go ga-ga over it.

Great Find!

Regards,

a reply to: SirKonstantin

Agnostics like me are also interested

a reply to: Elton

So we got 'cooked' quite naturally without the supernatural waving a wand. Wonder how that little bit of info will go down in the grand scheme of things papal etc? Wonder how long before the funding gets chopped?

originally posted by: Autorico
a reply to: SirKonstantin

Agnostics like me are also interested

Sorry, not trying to leave anyone out. So if this fits your happy place, then i have included you.

a reply to: Elton

The religious will take this as they usually would, a mixture of extremes of view i'd expect.

More important to me isn't necessarily how life here may well have started rather easily and simply, but more the implications of how easily and simply life is probably starting and has started, over oceans of Galactic time..elsewhere.

a reply to: SirKonstantin

lol it's all good. Most people only mention people of faith/religion or Atheists.

a reply to: Autorico

I feel more on the side of Deism and Buddhism.

I guess for me, just showing it is a scientifically workable solution will mean a lot.

Of course we can't really know without a time machine, but if we can prove that it can happen under certain conditions and those conditions are likely on the early Earth, I'm willing to accept it as plausible.

a reply to: SirKonstantin

I'm open to learning about all religion/faith/spirituality ideas.

a reply to: Elton

Myth is perfect. It can't be disproved. Religion is not threatened by this at all. Religion is easy to understand and chemistry isn't --perfect synergy.

As for the hypothesis, lets see if they can get a "ladder" shaped molecule before getting too excited.

Personally, I'm not surprised at all that entropy isn't uniformly distributed. If you take a well stocked molecular soup, protection from ionizing radiation and add energy for a billion years, you are probably going to get chemical batteries. I still have high hopes for our solar system.

a reply to: InverseLookingGlass

If the Vatican can say that the belief in ETs doesn't go against god, they can do the same for this.

a reply to: InverseLookingGlass

I'm not a fan of the modern 'science versus religion' arguments.

Many of my favorite scientists were quite religious.

a reply to: Elton

We have known since 1952 (the Miller-Urey experiment) that we could create the 20 amino acids required for life (and probably more than that).

But it is a big step to assemble those ingredients into a coded strand of RNA or DNA, complete with transcription, replication and the energy utilizing (metabolic) processes required for life.

How those processes could arise has not yet even been theorized, let alone generated, so its a 'no' on the abiogenesis front at present.

Still, I am sure that one day, through science and thought and study, we may get there.

But even if we did know the mechanism, it does not remove God from creation (it only removes an argument by a particular group of fundamentalists).

Maybe God took the chemicals, put them in a beaker, added a lid and gave it a damn good shake. Emptying the contents just as the sun came up and hey presto. It's life Jim, but not as we know it.

I still believe we are a deliberate creation and not some spontaneous chemical reaction that happened by chance.
They are having fun playing with all the ingredients for making soup. They still have no idea of who or what the cook is.

originally posted by: chr0naut
a reply to: Elton

We have known since 1952 (the Miller-Urey experiment) that we could create the 20 amino acids required for life (and probably more than that).

Yes, it's a step up from Miller-Urey, but it falls far short of abiogenesis, as did Miller Urey.

It's one more step on the journey toward understanding abiogenesis, but there's still far to go on that journey.

In my mind it comes down to everything is either dead or alive. If "life" came from "dead" particles or if "dead" particles came to "life".

we discovered fusion and created the atomic bomb. what will we create with this discovery?