Life on Earth Was Not a Fluke

[G_j]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=life-on-earth-was-not-a-fluke

Life on Earth Was Not a Fluke

Figuring out how biomolecular self-organization happens may hold the key to understanding life on Earth formed and perhaps how it might form on other planets

By Andrew Bissette and The Conversation

Editor's note: The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research.

How life came about from inanimate sets of chemicals is still a mystery. While we may never be certain which chemicals existed on prebiotic Earth, we can study the biomolecules we have today to give us clues about what happened three billion years ago.

Now scientists have used a set of these biomolecules to show one way in which life might have started. They found that these molecular machines, which exist in living cells today, don’t do much on their own. But as soon as they add fatty chemicals, which form a primitive version of a cell membrane, it got the chemicals close enough to react in a highly specific manner.

This form of self-organization is remarkable, and figuring out how it happens may hold the key to understanding life on earth formed and perhaps how it might form on other planets.

The 1987 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was given to chemists for showing how complex molecules can perform very precise functions. One of the behaviors of these molecules is called self-organization, where different chemicals come together because of the many forces acting on them and become a molecular machine capable of even more complex tasks. Each living cell is full of these molecular machines.

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[Octafish]

1. Lightning!

...and Water! Oh, and seeded with organic molecules from interstellar space.

Thank you for a fascinating article, G_j! The idea that all it takes is a little fat to get organized seems so macro.

[Jackpine Radical]

2. Boy am I organized!

"The idea that all it takes is a little fat to get organized seems so macro."

And macro.

[snooper2]

3. I thought it was due to some magical hand waving

[lumberjack_jeff]

4. I recommend the book "Rare Earth" by Ward and Brownlee. nt