New Research Rejects 80-Year Theory of 'Primordial Soup' as the Origin of Life

[☭proletarian☭]

ScienceDaily (Feb. 3, 2010) — For 80 years it has been accepted that early life began in a 'primordial soup' of organic molecules before evolving out of the oceans millions of years later. Today the 'soup' theory has been over turned in a pioneering paper in BioEssays which claims it was the Earth's chemical energy, from hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, which kick-started early life.


"Textbooks have it that life arose from organic soup and that the first cells grew by fermenting these organics to generate energy in the form of ATP. We provide a new perspective on why that old and familiar view won't work at all," said team leader Dr Nick lane from University College London. "We present the alternative that life arose from gases (H2, CO2, N2, and H2S) and that the energy for first life came from harnessing geochemical gradients created by mother Earth at a special kind of deep-sea hydrothermal vent -- one that is riddled with tiny interconnected compartments or pores."

New research rejects 80-year theory of 'primordial soup' as the origin of life

 

[Old Rocks]

I have been watching this debate in abiogenisis for years. From bilipid layers forming in micro cavities in feldspars, to sulpher and pyrite catalysis. Think of a rift zone coming on shore, such as we see in North East Africa today. At a time when the tides were much higher, the moon closer, so the tidal cycle was faster, and the ocean contained far more catalytic molecules due to the early bombardment of the earth.

SpringerLink - Journal Article

PDF (1.4 MB)

Section 1. General Overview
Experimental retracement of the origins of a protocell
It was also a protoneuron
Sidney W. Fox1 , Peter R. Bahn1, Klaus Dose1, Kaoru Harada1, Laura Hsu1, Yoshio Ishima1, John Jungck1, Jean Kendrick1, Gottfried Krampitz1, James C. Lacey Jr.1, Koichiro Matsuno1, Paul Melius1, Mavis Middlebrook1, Tadayoshi Nakashima1, Aristotel Pappelis1, Alexander Pol1, Duane L. Rohlfing1, Allen Vegotsky1, Thomas V. Waehneldt1, H. Wax1 and Bi Yu1

(1) Iowa State University, Florida State University, University of Miami, Southern Illinois University, and the University of South Alabama, USA
(2) Coastal Research and Development Institute, LSB 124, University of South Alabama, 36688 Mobile, AL


Abstract Although Oparin used coacervate droplets from two or more types of polymer to model the first cell, he hypothesized homacervation from protein, consistent with Pasteur and Darwin. Herrera made two amino acids and numerous cell-like structures (sulfobes) in the laboratory, which probably arose from intermediate polymers. Our experiments have conformed with a homoacervation of thermal proteinoid, in which amino acid sequences are determined by the reacting amino acids themselves. All proteinoids that have been tested assemble themselves alone in water to protocells. The protocells have characteristics of life defined by Webster's Dictionary: metabolism, growth, reproduction and response to stimuli in the environment. The protocells are able also to evolve to more modern cells including the initiation of a nucleic acid coding system.
Principal spinoffs from the results are revised evolutionary theory, models for protoneurons and networks thereof, and numerous industrial applications of thermal polyamino acids. Life itself has thus been reaffirmed to be rooted in protein, not in DNA nor RNA, which are however crucial to inheritance in modern life as instruction manual (Kornberg).
Recognition of the advances have been considerably delayed by the deeply held assumption that life began by chance from random polymerization of amino acids, in contrast to the experimental findings. The concepts of DNA/RNA-first and protein-first are reconciled by a rise-and-fall progression as often seen in biochemical and biological evolution.
The fact that amino acids order themselves explains in turn that thermal copolyamino acids are finding numerous applications. The entire sequence of processes in the proteinoid origins theory is now seen to be highly deterministic, in close accord with Einstein.

 

[Dr Gregg]

that would make sense since those areas have sources of energy, heat and minerals coming out of them