Chance, necessity and the origins of life: a physical sciences perspective

Hazen, Robert M.

doi:10.1098/rsta.2016.0353

Cited by 26 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 92 publications

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“…Many of the surficial geochemical environments customarily feature a wide assortment of minerals, which are believed to have played a crucial role in the emergence and early evolution of life (Cleaves et al, 2012;Hazen, 2017). However, it should be recognized that most of the land-based environments in this category are not anticipated to be widely prevalent on water worlds, which were introduced in Sec.…”

Section: B Origin Of Lifementioning

confidence: 99%

Colloquium: Physical constraints for the evolution of life on exoplanets

Lingam

Loeb

2019

Rev. Mod. Phys.

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Recently, many Earth-sized planets have been discovered around stars other than the Sun that might possess appropriate conditions for life. The development of theoretical methods for assessing the putative habitability of these worlds is of paramount importance, since it serves the dual purpose of identifying and quantifying what types of biosignatures may exist and determining the selection of optimal target stars and planets for subsequent observations. This Colloquium discusses how a multitude of physical factors act in tandem to regulate the propensity of worlds for hosting detectable biospheres. The focus is primarily on planets around low-mass stars, as they are most readily accessible to searches for biosignatures. This Colloquium outlines how factors such as stellar winds, the availability of ultraviolet and visible light, the surface water and land fractions, stellar flares, and associated phenomena place potential constraints on the evolution of life on these planets.

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Section: B Origin Of Lifementioning

confidence: 99%

Colloquium: Physical constraints for the evolution of life on exoplanets

Lingam

Loeb

2019

Rev. Mod. Phys.

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“…Indeed, according to the theories of Orgel and coworkers (Hill et al ., 1998; Liu & Orgel, 1998; Orgel, 1998), minerals could have been important both as condensing phases and reaction catalysts for the formation of the first biopolymers (e.g. peptides from amino acids and RNA/DNA from nucleic acids) (Hazen, 2013; Hazen, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nano‐atomic scale hydrophobic/philic confinement of peptides on mineral surfaces by cross‐correlated SPM and quantum mechanical DFT analysis

Moro

Ulian

Valdrè

2020

Journal of Microscopy

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The fundamental knowledge of the interaction between biomolecules and mineral surfaces is of utmost importance to drive new technological advancements, particularly for condensation, aggregation, catalysis and exchange of biomolecules. The mineral surface can be used in several fields and applications, for instance in biotechnology, environmental science and remediation, soil science, agro-food and related technology. This kind of knowledge may also provide several suggestions and have implications also for the prebiotic chemistry field, namely the study of the abiotic physicochemical steps that could have led to the 'creation' of the first known living organism. Nowadays, this kind of information at the micro and nanometric scale can be explored with several experimental and theoretical techniques and, among them, atomic force microscopy (AFM)-related methods and density functional theory (DFT) are particularly suited to investigate adsorption processes at single molecule level. In the present work, the specific interaction at the atomic scale between a small peptide (di-glycine) and the (001) surface of clinochlore, a mineral presenting alternately stacked talc-like layers (hydrophilic) and brucite-like sheets (hydrophobic), was characterized by means of a cross-correlated approach combining AFM and DFT simulations. The experiments evidenced the preferential adsorption of di-glycine onto the hydrophobic brucite-like sheet of the mineral, with the observed molecules organized as dot-like (single-molecules), agglomerates, filament-like and network structures by the surface, whereas only very few peptides were imaged onto the hydrophilic talc-like layer. From the theoretical analysis, the most stable conformation of the

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“…We are led to consider life not as a collection of biological objects, but as a living process. This informs new thinking on chemical origins of life, with regard to whether the process was inevitable or not [59] and what energy sources could have driven it [60]. The study of life as a living process also leads quite naturally to enlarging the process from chemically interacting primitive biological entities to socially interacting high-level biological entities (e.g.…”

Section: Universal Properties Of Life: Synthesizing Theory Data and mentioning

confidence: 99%

Re-conceptualizing the origins of life

Walker

Packard

Cody

2017

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A.

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One contribution of 18 to a theme issue 'Re-conceptualizing the origins of life'. The origins of life is our best chance at discovering scientific laws governing life, because it marks the point of departure from the predictable physical and chemical world to the novel, history-dependent living world. This theme issue aims to explore ways to build a deeper understanding of the nature of biology, by modelling the origins of life on a sufficiently abstract level, starting from prebiotic conditions on Earth and possibly on other planets and bridging quantitative frameworks approaching universal aspects of life. The aim of the editors is to stimulate new directions for solving the origins of life. The present introduction represents the point of view of the editors on some of the most promising future directions.This article is part of the themed issue 'Reconceptualizing the origins of life'.

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Chance, necessity and the origins of life: a physical sciences perspective

Cited by 26 publications

References 92 publications

Colloquium: Physical constraints for the evolution of life on exoplanets

Colloquium: Physical constraints for the evolution of life on exoplanets

Nano‐atomic scale hydrophobic/philic confinement of peptides on mineral surfaces by cross‐correlated SPM and quantum mechanical DFT analysis

Re-conceptualizing the origins of life

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