A Constructive Way to Think about Different Hydrothermal Environments for the Origins of Life

Omran, Arthur; Pasek, Matthew A.

doi:10.3390/life10040036

Cited by 16 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…Not only has reduced phosphorus been detected in meteorites, but also in rocks and minerals originating here on Earth. Other complex systems seem viable in multiple environments, [33][34][35] with some models incorporating phosphorus into self-assembling systems [36].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Oxidative Phosphorus Chemistry Perturbed by Minerals

Omran

Abbatiello

Feng

et al. 2022

Life

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Life is a complex, open chemical system that must be supported with energy inputs. If one fathoms how simple early life must have been, the complexity of modern-day life is staggering by comparison. A minimally complex system that could plausibly provide pyrophosphates for early life could be the oxidation of reduced phosphorus sources such as hypophosphite and phosphite. Like all plausible prebiotic chemistries, this system would have been altered by minerals and rocks in close contact with the evolving solutions. This study addresses the different types of perturbations that minerals might have on this chemical system. This study finds that minerals may inhibit the total production of oxidized phosphorus from reduced phosphorus species, they may facilitate the production of phosphate, or they may facilitate the production of pyrophosphate. This study concludes with the idea that mineral perturbations from the environment increase the chemical complexity of this system.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Oxidative Phosphorus Chemistry Perturbed by Minerals

Omran

Abbatiello

Feng

et al. 2022

Life

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“…Hydrothermal environments were also “hot” in the area of the origin of life. Terrestrial hydrothermal fields and submarine hydrothermal vents can provide materials, energy, reducing power, and pH gradients, which may facilitate the synthesis of basic biomolecules [ 38 , 39 , 40 ]. Moreover, terrestrial hydrothermal fields can evaporate water to become dry and get wet by rain, which formed a natural dry–wet cycle [ 41 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Plausibility of Early Life in a Relatively Wide Temperature Range: Clues from Simulated Metabolic Network Expansion

Chu

Chen

Zhao

et al. 2021

Life

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The debate on the temperature of the environment where life originated is still inconclusive. Metabolic reactions constitute the basis of life, and may be a window to the world where early life was born. Temperature is an important parameter of reaction thermodynamics, which determines whether metabolic reactions can proceed. In this study, the scale of the prebiotic metabolic network at different temperatures was examined by a thermodynamically constrained network expansion simulation. It was found that temperature has limited influence on the scale of the simulated metabolic networks, implying that early life may have occurred in a relatively wide temperature range.

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“…In the end, we cannot exclude the situation that somewhere a peptide-oligonucleotide molecular system accidentially emerged, one part of which served as a catalyst and the other as a template [58]. In this way, life may have originated only once and then evolved into the myriad forms we now know today [9]. On the other hand, modern molecular biology and genome study [59], too, fail to contribute decisively to bridging the opposite side of the huge gap "between the origins of life per se and the simplest and most primitive life forms we currently know of."…”

Section: Prebiotic Organic Chemistry On Earthmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…In addition, many water-filled large craters remained after meteoritic impacts. Such closed hot spots could circulate and distill all the waters coming with springs, rains, and rivers, thus producing the required primordial soup [8,9].…”

Section: Water-essential Prerequisite Of Lifementioning

confidence: 99%

Chance and Necessity in the Evolution of Matter to Life: A Comprehensive Hypothesis

Davankov

2021

Symmetry

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Specialists in several branches of life sciences are trying to solve, piece by piece, the immensely complex puzzle of the origin of life. Some parts of the puzzle seem to appear with a rather high degree of clarity, while others remain totally obscure. We cannot be sure that life emerged only on our Earth, but we believe that the presence of large amounts of water in its liquid state is absolutely essential for the emergence and evolution of living matter. We can also assume that the latter exploits everywhere the same light elements, mainly C, H, O, N, S, and P, and somehow manipulates the same simple monomeric and polymeric organic compounds, such as alpha-amino acids, carbohydrates, nucleic bases, and surface-active carboxylic acids. The author contributes to the field by stating that all fundamental particles of our matter are “homochiral” and predominantly produce in an absolute asymmetric synthesis amino acids of L-configuration and carbohydrates of D-series. Another important point is that free atmospheric oxygen mainly stems from the photolysis of water molecules by cosmic irradiation and is not necessarily bound to living organisms on the planet.

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A Constructive Way to Think about Different Hydrothermal Environments for the Origins of Life

Cited by 16 publications

References 39 publications

Oxidative Phosphorus Chemistry Perturbed by Minerals

Oxidative Phosphorus Chemistry Perturbed by Minerals

Plausibility of Early Life in a Relatively Wide Temperature Range: Clues from Simulated Metabolic Network Expansion

Chance and Necessity in the Evolution of Matter to Life: A Comprehensive Hypothesis

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