Jun 7, 2022 07:24 PM
Generic conception of self-replicating molecule emergence ... https://youtu.be/w2lqZL153JE
RELATED (scivillage): Spontaneously formed RNA 'breakthrough' - abiogenesis now all but solved?
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June 4, 2022 - An RNA Breakthrough ... https://youtu.be/UrD7497Mxd4
Did volcanic ‘glasses’ help spark early life?
https://www.science.org/content/article/...early-life
INTRO: When life emerged, it did so quickly. Fossils suggest microbes were present 3.7 billion years ago, just a few hundred million years after the 4.5-billion-year-old planet had cooled enough to support biochemistry, and many researchers think the hereditary material for these first organisms was RNA. Although not as complex as DNA, RNA would still be difficult to forge into the long strands needed to convey genetic information, raising the question of how it could have spontaneously formed.
Now, researchers may have an answer. In lab experiments, they show how rocks called basaltic glasses help individual RNA letters, known as nucleoside triphosphates, link into strands up to 200 letters long. The glasses would have been abundant in the fire and brimstone of early Earth; they are created when lava is quenched in air or water or when the melted rock created in asteroid strikes cools off rapidly.
The result has divided top origin-of-life researchers. “This seems to be a wonderful story that finally explains how the nucleoside triphosphates react with each other to give RNA strands,” says Thomas Carell, a chemist at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. But Jack Szostak, an RNA expert at Harvard University, says he won’t believe the result until the research team better characterizes the RNA strands... (MORE - details)
RELATED (scivillage): Spontaneously formed RNA 'breakthrough' - abiogenesis now all but solved?
- - - - - -
June 4, 2022 - An RNA Breakthrough ... https://youtu.be/UrD7497Mxd4
Did volcanic ‘glasses’ help spark early life?
https://www.science.org/content/article/...early-life
INTRO: When life emerged, it did so quickly. Fossils suggest microbes were present 3.7 billion years ago, just a few hundred million years after the 4.5-billion-year-old planet had cooled enough to support biochemistry, and many researchers think the hereditary material for these first organisms was RNA. Although not as complex as DNA, RNA would still be difficult to forge into the long strands needed to convey genetic information, raising the question of how it could have spontaneously formed.
Now, researchers may have an answer. In lab experiments, they show how rocks called basaltic glasses help individual RNA letters, known as nucleoside triphosphates, link into strands up to 200 letters long. The glasses would have been abundant in the fire and brimstone of early Earth; they are created when lava is quenched in air or water or when the melted rock created in asteroid strikes cools off rapidly.
The result has divided top origin-of-life researchers. “This seems to be a wonderful story that finally explains how the nucleoside triphosphates react with each other to give RNA strands,” says Thomas Carell, a chemist at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. But Jack Szostak, an RNA expert at Harvard University, says he won’t believe the result until the research team better characterizes the RNA strands... (MORE - details)