Molecules believed to be essential to the emergence of life on Earth may have arisen from inorganic chemicals, according to new research that offers potentially crucial insights into how living organisms came to exist on our planet billions of years ago.
The recent study, conducted by Newcastle University scientists with support from the United Kingdom’s Natural Environmental Research Council, focused on not only the origins of life on Earth but also how geological materials helped give rise to some of the planet’s earliest organisms.
In a series of experiments, the researchers utilized hydrogen, bicarbonate, and magnetite rich in iron under conditions very similar to those that occur naturally near openings on the ocean floor from which very hot, mineral-rich water emerges.
Known as hydrothermal vents, these hot areas on the seafloor are environments well-recognized as the home of extremophiles, microorganisms that defy the expectations of scientists for their ability to thrive under very harsh conditions, including heat, as well as extreme acidity.
The Newcastle team’s recent study yielded a variety of different organic molecules that include as many as 18 carbon atoms, as well as carboxylic acids.
These acids—more commonly known as fatty acids—are organic molecules with components that are both hydrophobic and hydrophilic. In short, their constituent organic regions can both attract and repel water, giving rise to the natural formation of cell-like compartments in aqueous environments that the researchers suspect may have played a key role in the formation of cell membranes.
Although the importance of fatty acids in cellular composition was already well known, one problem that past studies had failed to reveal had been where they came from, and how they could have given rise to some of the planet’s earliest cellular organisms.
Dr. Graham Purvis, a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Durham University who led the research conducted at Newcastle for this study, says that understanding the processes that gave rise to the formation of cellular compartments is central to understanding life’s inception on our planet.
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