{"id":51,"date":"2009-06-18T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-18T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/scienceandthesacred\/2009\/06\/four-news-discovers-shed-light-on-puzzling-origins-of-life.html"},"modified":"2014-05-19T09:16:27","modified_gmt":"2014-05-19T13:16:27","slug":"four-news-discovers-shed-light-on-puzzling-origins-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/scienceandthesacred\/2009\/06\/four-news-discovers-shed-light-on-puzzling-origins-of-life.html","title":{"rendered":"Four New Discoveries Shed Light on Puzzling Origins of Life"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"image-question24-large.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/202\/import\/image-question24-large.jpg\" class=\"mt-image-center\" style=\"margin: 0pt auto 20px;text-align: center\" height=\"244\" width=\"571\" \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<div>While the fact that life on Earth has emerged and flourished is abundantly clear, the mechanisms behind the origin of life still evade scientists.&nbsp; Where did the proteins and genetic information that have given rise to life originate?&nbsp; Which came first: the proteins or the genetic information?&nbsp; How did a self-replicating chemical system &#8212; the beginnings of genetic history according to Dr. Francis Crick &#8212; initiate?&nbsp; How did &#8220;left-handed&#8221; amino acids and &#8220;right-handed&#8221; sugars and nucleotides connect to form RNA and DNA despite the fact that &#8220;left-handed&#8221; nucleotides normally block &#8220;right-handed&#8221; nucleotides from linking together?<\/p>\n<p>While the answers to these questions may still be just outside our grasps, four recent breakthroughs by scientists have given hope for insight into these prebiotic puzzles.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Researcher Jack W. Szostak has shown that simple fatty acids, like those that existed in a primitive earth, will form double-layered spheres similar to cell membranes.&nbsp; As this protocell incorporates more fatty acids, it will eventually divide, much like normal cell division.&nbsp; Furthermore, Dr. Szostak and his colleagues have found that small molecules could pass through this protocell membrane.&nbsp; If these tiny molecules form with other like molecules into a larger molecule, they cannot leave the cell.&nbsp; This could explain how larger molecules, including DNA, formed inside early protocells.<\/li>\n<li>Chemist John Sutherland and his colleagues Matthew W. Powner and B\u00e9atrice Gerland have discovered a &#8220;recipe&#8221; for nucleotides &#8212; the building blocks of RNA and DNA &#8212; using base components assumed to have existed on a primitive earth.&nbsp; Their breakthrough was the realization that the base and the sugar of a nucleotide did not have to form separately but instead could have built up as a single unit.<\/li>\n<li>Dr. Gerald F. Joyce of the Scripps Research Institute has developed molecules that are &#8220;immortal,&#8221; meaning they can pass on their information indefinitely.&nbsp; So far, Dr. Joyce has developed two RNA molecules that promote each other&#8217;s synthesis from the four kinds of RNA nucleotides.&nbsp; Dr. Sutherland believes it will only be a matter of time before Dr. Joyce recreates full self-replication of RNA species.<\/li>\n<li>Finally, researchers like Donna Blackmond of Imperial College London are nearing a solution for the &#8220;handedness&#8221; problem of nucleotides.&nbsp; While normally &#8220;left-handed&#8221; nucleotides inhibit the linking of &#8220;right-handed&#8221; ones (thanks to a problem known as &#8220;original syn&#8221;), when given the right cycle of freezing and melting, a mixture of left and right nucleotides can be converted to just one type, which could then freely connect.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>To read more about these four breakthroughs and how they can help us better understand the processes that led to the origin of life, check out the full article &#8220;New Glimpses of Life&#8217;s Puzzling Origins&#8221; from <i>The New York Times&#8217;<\/i> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/06\/16\/science\/16orig.html?pagewanted=2&amp;_r=2&amp;ref=science\">website<\/a>.&nbsp; You can read more about Dr. Sutherland&#8217;s reasearch on the origin of nucleotides in our earlier post <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/scienceandthesacred\/2009\/05\/chemist-shows-how-rna-may-have-formed.html\">&#8220;Chemist Shows How RNA May Have Formed.&#8221;<\/a>&nbsp; For more on the origin of life, check out <a href=\"http:\/\/biologos.org\/questions\/the-origin-of-life\/\">&#8220;Isn&#8217;t the Origin of Life Highly Improbable?&#8221;<\/a> in our Questions section at www.biologos.org.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While the fact that life on Earth has emerged and flourished is abundantly clear, the mechanisms behind the origin of life still evade scientists.&nbsp; Where did the proteins and genetic information that have given rise to life originate?&nbsp; Which came first: the proteins or the genetic information?&nbsp; How did a self-replicating chemical system &#8212; the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":196,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-thoughts"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - 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