Radical Study Suggests Life on Earth Arose From Non-Living Matter TWICE
- Life on Earth may have emerged from non-living matter twice near deep-sea hydrothermal vents, according to a new study in Science Advances. Researchers claim two main lineages independently developed pathways to become living cells.
- Scientists analyzed about 420 chemical reactions that converted CO2, NH3, and H2S into building blocks for life. Metals naturally occurring in hydrothermal vents served as excellent catalysts for these early metabolic processes.
- These two branches figured out their own ways to tackle the same problems. While LUCA possessed enzymes for only about half of metabolism, the other half relied on environmental metals.
- "We are looking at one origin of the genetic code, but two origins of life," said William Martin, a biologist from Heinrich Heine University in Germany. This independent transition allowed lineages to become free-living states.
- Yet researchers agree the complex network converting H2S, CO2, NH3, and phosphate into building blocks cannot have arisen in an instant. This study highlights astonishing strokes of luck stretching back more than 4 billion years.
12 Articles
12 Articles
A new study published in Science Advances suggests a hypothesis that could change the way we understand the origin of life on Earth. Researchers argue that the two major branches of life - bacteria and archaeology - would have become organisms with autonomous life on different evolutionary pathways, which means that life could have appeared independently twice, says Science Alert.
Life Twice Over: Earth's Origins May Trace To One Lifeless Forebear
Analysis of chemical reactions in single-celled organisms suggests that life on Earth may have emerged twice. Researchers propose that bacteria and archaea evolved independently from a common non-living precursor rather than descending from a single shared living cell. This hypothesis challenges the traditional theory of a Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) for all existing life forms. Methodology of Evolutionary Reconstruction The study is b…
A new study seeks to answer one of the most complex questions: how did chemistry become biology?
Radical Study Suggests Life on Earth Arose From Non-Living Matter TWICE
The fact that you, or I, or any living creature, is here at all is a series of astonishing strokes of luck stretching back more than 4 billion years. One of the biggest hurdles was the very first one: How did life emerge from a primordial soup of stuff that very much wasn't alive? A radical new study, published in Science Advances, suggests that this unlikely threshold may actually have been crossed not once, but twice.
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