| Story Views | |
| Now: | |
| Last Hour: | |
| Last 24 Hours: | |
| Total: | |
The Power Behind Primordial Soup Discovered
read more at Anne’s Astronomy News http://annesastronomynews.com/
Researchers at the University of Leeds may have solved a key puzzle about how objects from space could have kindled life on Earth.
An artists impression of a meteorite landing in a hot, acidic pool of liquids. Image Credit: James McKay 2013 (www.jamesmckay.info)
While it is generally accepted that some important ingredients for life came from meteorites bombarding the early Earth, scientists have not been able to explain how that inanimate rock transformed into the building blocks of life.
This new study shows how a chemical, similar to one now found in all living cells and vital for generating the energy that makes something alive, could have been created when meteorites containing phosphorus minerals landed in hot, acidic pools of liquids around volcanoes, which were likely to have been common across the early Earth.
“The mystery of how living organisms sprung out of lifeless rock has long puzzled scientists, but we think that the unusual phosphorus chemicals we found could be a precursor to the batteries that now power all life on Earth. But the fact that it developed simply, in conditions similar to the early Earth, suggests this could be the missing link between geology and biology,” said Dr Terry Kee, from the University’s School of Chemistry, who led the research.
All life on Earth is powered by a process called chemiosmosis, where the chemical adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the rechargeable chemical ‘battery’ for life, is both broken down and re-formed during respiration to release energy used to drive the reactions of life, or metabolism. The complex enzymes required for both the creation and break down of ATP are unlikely to have existed on the Earth during the period when life first developed. This led scientists to look for a more basic chemical with similar properties to ATP, but that does not require enzymes to transfer energy.
Phosphorus is the key element in ATP, and other fundamental building blocks of life like DNA, but the form it commonly takes on Earth, phosphorus (V), is largely insoluble in water and has a low chemical reactivity. The early Earth, however, was regularly bombarded by meteorites and interstellar dust rich in exotic minerals, including the far more reactive form of phosphorus, the iron-nickel-phosphorus mineral schreibersite.
The scientists simulated the impact of such a meteorite with the hot, volcanically-active, early Earth by placing samples of the Sikhote-Alin meteorite, an iron meteorite which fell in Siberia in 1947, in acid taken from the Hveradalur geothermal area in Iceland. The rock was left to react with the acidic fluid in test tubes incubated by the surrounding hot spring for four days, followed by a further 30 days at room temperature.
This oblique, southward-looking view of Gale crater on Mars shows the landing site and the mound of layered rocks that Curiosity is investigating. The landing site is in the smooth area in front of the mound (marked by a yellow ellipse). Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/UA
In their analysis of the resulting solution the scientists found the compound pyrophosphite, a molecular ‘cousin’ of pyrophosphate – the part of ATP responsible for energy transfer. The scientists believe this compound could have acted as an earlier form of ATP in what they have dubbed ‘chemical life’.
“Chemical life would have been the intermediary step between inorganic rock and the very first living biological cell. You could think of chemical life as a machine –a robot, for example, is capable of moving and reacting to surroundings, but it is not alive. With the aid of these primitive batteries, chemicals became organised in such a way as to be capable of more complex behaviour and would have eventually developed into the living biological structures we see today,” said Dr Terry Kee.
The team from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL-Caltech) working on the Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars in August last year, has recently reported the presence of phosphorus on the Red Planet.
“If Curiosity has found phosphorus in one of the forms we produced in Iceland, this may indicate that conditions on Mars were at one point suitable for the development of life in much the same way we now believe it developed on Earth,” added Dr Kee.
The team at Leeds are now working with colleagues at JPL-Caltech to understand how these early batteries and the ‘chemical life’ they became part of might have developed into biological life. As part of this work they will be using facilities in the University of Leeds’ Faculty of Engineering, currently used to test new fuel cells, to build a ‘geological fuel cell’ using minerals and gases common on the early Earth. Researchers will apply different chemicals to its surface and monitor the reactions take place and the chemical products which develop.
The team also hope to travel to Disko Island in Greenland which is home to the Earth’s only naturally-occurring source of schreibersite, the mineral found in the Sikhote-Alin meteorite. Here, they hope to repeat their experiments and show that the same chemicals develop in an entirely Earth-originated setting.
The paper “Hydrothermal modification of the Sikhote-Alin iron meteorite under low pH geothermal environments. A plausibly prebiotic route to activated phosphorus on the early Earth” was published online by the journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta on 15th March 2013. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016703713000161)
Source: The University of Leeds
n/a
2013-04-06 08:04:12
Source: http://annesastronomynews.com/the-power-behind-primordial-soup-discovered/
Source:
“Ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth”. 2 Tim 3 v 7.
ATP is actually synthesized in vivo by an enzyme that looks a bit like an electric motor. It has a spindle within a body composed of identical subunits. These subunits have to be a very precise shape. Their precise shape is determined by their aminoacid sequences. This sequence is codified by four bases in the DNA. There is no evidence that information can be uploaded to the DNA from a protein, so the ATP synthase is defined not by random chemical interactions occurring in the environment, but by specific instructions being sent to the environment. We still do not know how an aminoacid chain manages to fold into the exact shape that will be needed for its function. But there is someone who has the wisdom to know how this happens. His name is the Lord Jesus Christ, and He is the creator of all life, and all that surrounds us. He upholds all things by the word of His power. He even upheld everything as He was being nailed to a cross of wood, by evil men.
As the ATP synthase motor spins, it throws off ATP molecules. It reveals what is known as “irreducible complexity”, ie the individual subunits have to be present all at the same time and in the same place, because without each other they are useless for their ultimate function.
But these scientific boys and girls are talking about how ATP or a similar molecule might conceivably arise by chance. But without a body to power, all set up and ready to go, the ATP-like molecule will be wasted. Thousands of these molecules are needed every second, in a living organism.
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth”.
This is not just a collection of words, but a statement of fact. Even the seven words themselves comprise, in the original Hebrew, what can only be described as a standing miracle. They are underpinned by mathematical forms and shapes, both two and three-dimensional, which defy a naturalistic explanation. These are the words of God Himself. To you. And He is incapable of lying.
Scientists frequently invoke the idea of Occam’s Razor; the idea that the simplest solution to a problem is usually the correct one.
If you wish to check out my assertions about Genesis Chapter One, then visit “The Other Bible Code” website. Life will change for you from that moment onwards. You will know that this is the truth. If you reject this clear manifestation of the truth, then you will be answerable for that, on a day soon to be upon us all.
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”.