scholarly journals Search for water and life's building blocks in the universe: A summary

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (A29B) ◽  
pp. 436-440
Author(s):  
Edwin A. Bergin
Keyword(s):  
Origin Of Life ◽  
Radioactive Decay ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
The Origin Of Life ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Universe

AbstractWater and organics need to be supplied to terrestrial worlds like our own to provide the essential compounds required for the origin of life. These molecules form initially during the earliest stages of stellar birth, are supplied by collapse to the planet-forming disk predominantly as ice, and may undergo significant processing during this collapse and within large planetesimals that are heated via radioactive decay. Water and organic carriers can be quite volatile, thus their survival as ices within rocks is not preordained. In this focus meeting our goal is to bring together astronomers, cosmochemists, planetary scientists, chemical physicists, and spectroscopists who each explore individual aspects of this problem. In this summary we discuss some of the main themes that appeared in the meeting. Ultimately, cross-field collaboration is needed to provide greater understanding of the likelihood that terrestrial worlds form with these key compounds readily available on their surfaces – and are hence habitable if present at the right distance from the star.

Photochemical Evolution of Interstellar/Precometary Organic Material

1997 ◽  
Vol 161 ◽  
pp. 23-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis J. Allamandola ◽  
Max P. Bernstein ◽  
Scott A. Sandford
Keyword(s):  
Origin Of Life ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Complex Species ◽  
Infrared Observations ◽  
Interstellar Ice ◽  
Polycyclic Aromatic ◽  
Ultraviolet Photolysis ◽  
The Origin Of Life ◽  
Simple Molecules ◽  
Complex Organic

AbstractInfrared observations, combined with realistic laboratory simulations, have revolutionized our understanding of interstellar ice and dust, the building blocks of comets. Since comets are thought to be a major source of the volatiles on the primative earth, their organic inventory is of central importance to questions concerning the origin of life. Ices in molecular clouds contain the very simple molecules H2O, CH3OH, CO, CO2, CH4, H2, and probably some NH3and H2CO, as well as more complex species including nitriles, ketones, and esters. The evidence for these, as well as carbonrich materials such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), microdiamonds, and amorphous carbon is briefly reviewed. This is followed by a detailed summary of interstellar/precometary ice photochemical evolution based on laboratory studies of realistic polar ice analogs. Ultraviolet photolysis of these ices produces H2, H2CO, CO2, CO, CH4, HCO, and the moderately complex organic molecules: CH3CH2OH (ethanol), HC(= O)NH2(formamide), CH3C(= O)NH2(acetamide), R-CN (nitriles), and hexamethylenetetramine (HMT, C6H12N4), as well as more complex species including polyoxymethylene and related species (POMs), amides, and ketones. The ready formation of these organic species from simple starting mixtures, the ice chemistry that ensues when these ices are mildly warmed, plus the observation that the more complex refractory photoproducts show lipid-like behavior and readily self organize into droplets upon exposure to liquid water suggest that comets may have played an important role in the origin of life.

The Origin of Life on Earth and in the Universe

2006 ◽  
pp. 147-198
Author(s):  
Jordi Llorca ◽  
Malcolm E. Schrader ◽  
Pasquale Stano ◽  
Francesca Ferri ◽  
Pier Luigi Luisi
Keyword(s):  
Origin Of Life ◽  
The Origin Of Life ◽  
Life On Earth ◽  
The Universe

General discussion after session V

1988 ◽  
Vol 325 (1587) ◽  
pp. 611-618 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Origin Of Life ◽  
Time Perspective ◽  
Applied Mathematics ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Living Systems ◽  
Organic Chemical ◽  
General Terms ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Origin Of Life ◽  
Emergence Of Life

N. C. Wickramasinghe ( Department of Applied Mathematics and Astronomy, University College, Cardiff, U. K. ). The question of the origin of life is, of course, one of the most important scientific questions and it is also one of the most difficult. One is inevitably faced here with a situation where there are very few empirical facts of direct relevance and perhaps no facts relating to the actual transition from organic material to material that can even remotely be described as living. The time perspective of events that relate to this problem has already been presented by Dr Chang. Uncertainty still persists as to the actual first moment of the origin or the emergence of life on the Earth. At some time between 3800 and 3300 Ma BP the first microscopic living systems seem to have emerged. There is a definite moment in time corresponding to a sudden appearance of cellular-type living systems. Now, traditionally the evolution of carbonaceous compounds which led to the emergence of life on Earth could be divided into three principal steps and I shall just remind you what those steps are. The first step is the production of chemical building blocks that lead to the origin of the organic molecules necessary as a prerequisite for the evolution of life. Step two can be described in general terms as prebiotic evolution, the arrangement of these chemical units into some kind of sequence of precursor systems that come almost up to life but not quite; and then stage three is the early biological evolution which actually effects the transition from proto-cellular organic-type forms into truly cellular living systems. The transition is from organic chemistry, prebiotic chemistry to biochemistry. Those are the three principal stages that have been defined by traditional workers in the field, the people who, as Dr Chang said, have had the courage to make these queries and attempt to answer them. Ever since the classic experiments where organic materials were synthesized in the laboratory a few decades back, it was thought that the first step, the production of organic chemical units, is important for the origin of life on the Earth, and that this had to take place in some location on the Earth itself.

scholarly journals An optimal degree of physical and chemical heterogeneity for the origin of life?

2011 ◽  
Vol 366 (1580) ◽  
pp. 2894-2901 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack W. Szostak
Keyword(s):  
Nucleic Acid ◽  
Origin Of Life ◽  
Self Assembly ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Reaction Products ◽  
Amphiphilic Molecules ◽  
Essential Components ◽  
The Origin Of Life ◽  
Chemical Inputs ◽  
Physical And Chemical

The accumulation of pure, concentrated chemical building blocks, from which the essential components of protocells could be assembled, has long been viewed as a necessary, but extremely difficult step on the pathway to the origin of life. However, recent experiments have shown that moderately increasing the complexity of a set of chemical inputs can in some cases lead to a dramatic simplification of the resulting reaction products. Similarly, model protocell membranes composed of certain mixtures of amphiphilic molecules have superior physical properties than membranes composed of single amphiphiles. Moreover, membrane self-assembly under simple and natural conditions gives rise to heterogeneous mixtures of large multi-lamellar vesicles, which are predisposed to a robust pathway of growth and division that simpler and more homogeneous small unilamellar vesicles cannot undergo. Might a similar relaxation of the constraints on building block purity and homogeneity actually facilitate the difficult process of nucleic acid replication? Several arguments suggest that mixtures of monomers and short oligonucleotides may enable the chemical copying of polynucleotides of sufficient length and sequence complexity to allow for the emergence of the first nucleic acid catalysts. The question of the origin of life may become less daunting once the constraints of overly well-defined laboratory experiments are appropriately relaxed.

Testing the universality of biology: a review

2007 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 241-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Chela-Flores
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Conditions ◽  
Common Ancestor ◽  
Seminal Contribution ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Molecular Events ◽  
The Origin Of Life ◽  
The Right ◽  
Life On Earth ◽  
Cosmic Convergence ◽  
The Universe

AbstractWe discuss whether it is possible to test the universality of biology, a quest that is of paramount relevance for one of its most recent branches, namely astrobiology. We review this topic in terms of the relative roles played on the Earth biota by contingency and evolutionary convergence. Following the seminal contribution of Darwin, it is reasonable to assume that all forms of life known to us so far are not only terrestrial, but are descendants of a common ancestor that evolved on this planet at the end of a process of chemical evolution. We also raise the related question of whether the molecular events that were precursors to the origin of life on Earth are bound to occur elsewhere in the Universe, wherever the environmental conditions are similar to the terrestrial ones. We refer to ‘cosmic convergence’ as the possible occurrence elsewhere in the Universe of Earth-like environmental conditions. We argue that cosmic convergence is already suggested by observational data. The set of hypotheses for addressing the question of the universality of biology can be tested by future experiments that are feasible with current technology. We focus on landing on Europa and the broader implications of selecting the specific example of the right landing location. We have previously discussed the corresponding miniaturized equipment that is already in existence. The significance of these crucial points needs to be put into a wider scientific perspective, which is one of the main objectives of this review.

scholarly journals The origin of life from primordial planets

2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 83-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl H. Gibson ◽  
Rudolph E. Schild ◽  
N. Chandra Wickramasinghe
Keyword(s):  
Origin Of Life ◽  
Big Bang ◽  
Space Telescopes ◽  
The Origin Of Life ◽  
Primordial Planets ◽  
Life On Earth ◽  
The Big Bang ◽  
Primordial Soup ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Origin Of The Universe

AbstractThe origin of life and the origin of the Universe are among the most important problems of science and they might be inextricably linked. Hydro-gravitational-dynamics cosmology predicts hydrogen–helium gas planets in clumps as the dark matter of galaxies, with millions of planets per star. This unexpected prediction is supported by quasar microlensing of a galaxy and a flood of new data from space telescopes. Supernovae from stellar over-accretion of planets produce the chemicals (C, N, O, P, etc.) and abundant liquid-water domains required for first life and the means for wide scattering of life prototypes. Life originated following the plasma-to-gas transition between 2 and 20 Myr after the big bang, while planetary core oceans were between critical and freezing temperatures, and interchanges of material between planets constituted essentially a cosmological primordial soup. Images from optical, radio and infrared space telescopes suggest life on Earth was neither first nor inevitable.

scholarly journals The Rise of A Habitable Planet: Four Required Conditions for the Origin of Life in the Universe

Geosciences ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimir Kompanichenko
Keyword(s):  
Origin Of Life ◽  
Intermediate State ◽  
High Frequency ◽  
Intermediate Stage ◽  
Continuous Response ◽  
Terrestrial Life ◽  
Habitable Planet ◽  
The Origin Of Life ◽  
Hydrothermal Environments ◽  
The Universe

The advanced version of the author’s inversion concept of the origin of terrestrial life and its application for life in the Universe has been substantiated. A key step in the transition to life consists in the thermodynamic inversion of non-living prebiotic microsystems when the contributions of free energy (F) and information (I) become prevalent over the contribution of entropy (S). It is based the thermodynamic corridor that is mandatory for all chemical scenarios for the origin of life: F + I < S (prebiotic microsystem) → F + I ≈ S (intermediate stage, inversion moment) → F + I > S (primary living unit). A prebiotic organic microsystem can reach the intermediate state between non-life and life only under high-frequency and multilevel oscillations of physic-chemical parameters in hydrothermal environments. The oscillations are considered the fourth required condition for the origin of life, in addition to the three well-known ones: the availability of organic matter, an aqueous medium, and a source of energy. The emergence of initial life sparks in nonequilibrium prebiotic microsystems (being at the intermediate state) proceeds through the continuous response (counteraction) of prebiotic microsystems to incessant physic-chemical oscillations (stress). The next step of laboratory simulations on the origin of life directed to the exploration of the microsystems’ response to high-frequency oscillations (>10−10 s–<30 min) is proposed. Finally, some fragments of the general scenario of the origin of life in the Universe based on the whole four required conditions have been outlined.

The first step from molecules to life: Formation of large random molecules acting as micro-environments

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saibal Mitra
Keyword(s):  
Molecular Biology ◽  
Origin Of Life ◽  
Ultraviolet Irradiation ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Percolation Process ◽  
Von Neumann ◽  
Percolation Clusters ◽  
Period 2 ◽  
Interstellar Ice ◽  
The Origin Of Life

&lt;p&gt;The mathematician John von Neumann, through his work on universal constructors, discovered&lt;br /&gt;a generalized version of the central dogma of molecular biology biology in the 1940s, long&amp;#160; &lt;br /&gt;before the biological version had been discovered. While his discovery played no role in the&amp;#160; &lt;br /&gt;development of molecular biology, we may benefit from a similar mathematical approach to find&amp;#160; &lt;br /&gt;clues on the origin of life. This then involves addressing those problems in the field that&amp;#160; &lt;br /&gt;do not depend on the details of organic chemistry. We can then consider a general set of&amp;#160; &lt;br /&gt;models that describe machines capable of self-maintenance and self-replication formulated in&amp;#160; &lt;br /&gt;terms of a set of building blocks and their interactions.&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The analogue of the origin of life problem is then to explain how one can get to such&amp;#160; &lt;br /&gt;machines starting from a set of only building blocks. A fundamental obstacle one then faces&amp;#160; &lt;br /&gt;is the limit on the complexity of low fidelity replicating systems, preventing building&amp;#160; &lt;br /&gt;blocks from getting assembled randomly into low fidelity machines which can then improve due&amp;#160; &lt;br /&gt;to natural selection [1]. A generic way out of this problem is for the entire ecosystem of&amp;#160; &lt;br /&gt;machines to have been encapsulated in a micro-structure with fixed inner surface features&amp;#160; &lt;br /&gt;that would have boosted the fidelity [2]. Such micro-structures could have formed as a result&amp;#160; &lt;br /&gt;of the random assembly of building blocks, leading to so-called percolation clusters [2].&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;This then leads us to consider how in the real world a percolation process involving the&amp;#160; &lt;br /&gt;random assembly of organic molecules can be realized. A well studied process in the&amp;#160; &lt;br /&gt;literature is the assembly of organic compounds in ice grains due to UV radiation and heating&amp;#160; &lt;br /&gt;events [3,4,5]. This same process will also lead to the percolation process if it proceeds&amp;#160; &lt;br /&gt;for a sufficiently long period [2].&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;In this talk I will discuss the percolation process in more detail than has been done in [2],&amp;#160; &lt;br /&gt;explaining how it leads to the necessary symmetry breakings such as the origin of chiral&amp;#160; &lt;br /&gt;molecules needed to explain the origin of life. &amp;#160;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;[1] Eigen, M., 1971. Self-organization of matter and the evolution of biological&amp;#160; &lt;br /&gt;macromolecules. Naturwissenschaften 58, 465-523.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;[2] Mitra, S., 2019. Percolation clusters of organics in interstellar ice grains as the&amp;#160; &lt;br /&gt;incubators of life, Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology 149, 33-38.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;[3] Ciesla, F., and Sandford.,S., 2012. Organic Synthesis via Irradiation and Warming of Ice&amp;#160; &lt;br /&gt;Grains in the Solar Nebula. Science 336, 452-454.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;[4] Mu&amp;#241;oz Caro, G., et al., 2002. Amino acids from ultraviolet irradiation of interstellar ice&amp;#160; &lt;br /&gt;analogues. Nature 416, 403-406.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;[5] &amp;#160;Meinert, C,., et al., 2016. Ribose and related sugars from ultraviolet irradiation of&amp;#160; &lt;br /&gt;interstellar ice analogs. Science 352, 208-212.&lt;/p&gt;

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