All articles tagged with #prebiotic chemistry
Originally Published 2 months ago — by SciTechDaily
Scientists discovered that on Saturn's moon Titan, polar and nonpolar substances like hydrogen cyanide, methane, and ethane can form stable co-crystals under freezing conditions, challenging basic chemical rules and providing new insights into prebiotic chemistry and the potential origins of life in extreme environments.
Originally Published 4 months ago — by Earth.com
Scientists have discovered a water-friendly chemical reaction that links RNA and amino acids under mild conditions, providing a plausible pathway for the formation of the first proteins on early Earth and bridging the gap between metabolism, genetic information, and protein building.
Originally Published 4 months ago — by Nature
The article discusses a novel chemical method for non-enzymatic RNA aminoacylation and peptidyl-RNA synthesis in water, using biological thioesters to selectively attach amino acids to RNA, shedding light on potential pathways for the origin of protein synthesis and the interplay between nucleic acids and proteins in early life.
Originally Published 5 months ago — by SciTechDaily
Scientists at Scripps Research discovered that ribose, a sugar crucial for RNA, is naturally more efficient at attaching to phosphate than similar sugars, suggesting a chemical advantage that may have contributed to the emergence of life’s molecular building blocks on early Earth.
Originally Published 7 months ago — by NASASpaceFlight.com -
NASA's Dragonfly mission, launching in 2028, will explore Saturn's moon Titan using a rotorcraft to study its organic chemistry and potential for life, focusing on prebiotic processes and ancient water sources to understand life's origins.
Originally Published 1 year ago — by ScienceAlert
New research suggests that ancient hot springs, similar to those found today in places like Yellowstone National Park, may have played a crucial role in the emergence of life on Earth. The study highlights the potential of iron sulfides, minerals found in these springs, to facilitate carbon fixation, a key process in the development of life. By simulating early Earth conditions, researchers demonstrated that iron sulfides could produce methanol, supporting the idea that both land-based hot springs and deep-sea hydrothermal vents contributed to the origin of life.
Originally Published 1 year ago — by India Education Diary
Biophysicists have discovered that simple heat flows in primordial times could have fostered the first prebiotic reactions, leading to the selective accumulation and up-concentration of prebiotic building blocks in rock fissures. This process could have created a "molecular kitchen" in large geological network systems, providing the necessary conditions for the emergence of life's ingredients. The researchers aim to further investigate the potential of this system in preparing the "dishes" of life as part of the Collaborative Research Centre "Molecular Evolution in Prebiotic Environments."
Originally Published 1 year ago — by Forbes
Graphite, likely formed from giant impactors hitting Earth 4.3 billion years ago, may have triggered the creation of prebiotic molecules essential for the onset of life. Laboratory simulations by planetary astrochemists at Cambridge University suggest that graphite offers a potential route towards prebiotic chemistry, with heating of organic tar likely producing molecules for life's building blocks. The process involves the formation of nitriles, which can lead to the creation of adenine, a base for RNA and DNA, and eventually sugar. However, achieving chemical diversity while minimizing unwanted reactions remains a challenge, and further experiments are needed to validate the model's predictions.
Originally Published 1 year ago — by Phys.org
Scripps Research chemists have proposed a solution to the mystery of how molecular "handedness" or homochirality emerged in early biology, showing that it could have become established through a chemistry phenomenon called kinetic resolution. Their studies suggest that the emergence of homochirality was largely due to kinetic resolution, where one chiral form becomes more abundant than another due to faster production and/or slower depletion. This explanation offers a broad and convincing explanation for the emergence of homochirality in fundamental biological molecules such as amino acids, DNA, and RNA.
Originally Published 1 year ago — by Nature.com
A study published in Nature explores a prebiotically plausible route to proteinogenic peptides and discovers a preference for heterochiral ligation, which initially seems problematic for the emergence of homochiral l-peptides. However, the study paradoxically demonstrates that this heterochiral preference provides a mechanism for enantioenrichment in homochiral chains, leading to symmetry breaking, chiral amplification, and chirality transfer processes in multicomponent competitive reactions. The findings offer insights into the emergence of homochirality in biological polymers and provide a prebiotically plausible mechanism for this phenomenon.
Originally Published 1 year ago — by Nature.com
The origin of life remains a complex and interdisciplinary challenge, with competing hypotheses and fragmented research. Two prominent frameworks, prebiotic soup and hydrothermal systems, propose radically distinct environments for the origin of life, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. The field needs to move towards testing specific hypotheses within coherent wider frameworks, fostering good communication, embracing open science, and improving publishing practices to overcome fragmentation and promote objectivity, cooperation, and falsifiability in the pursuit of understanding the origin of life.
Originally Published 2 years ago — by SciTechDaily
NASA's Dragonfly mission to Saturn's moon, Titan, will carry an instrument called the Dragonfly Mass Spectrometer (DraMS) to study the chemistry at work on Titan and investigate the progression of prebiotic chemistry. DraMS will remotely study the chemical makeup of the Titanian surface and scan through measurements of samples from Titan's surface material for evidence of prebiotic chemistry. The Dragonfly robotic rotorcraft will capitalize on Titan's low gravity and dense atmosphere to fly between different points of interest on Titan's surface, spread as far as several miles apart.
Originally Published 2 years ago — by Phys.org
NASA's Dragonfly mission to Saturn's moon, Titan, will carry an instrument called the Dragonfly Mass Spectrometer (DraMS) to study the chemical makeup of the Titanian surface and search for evidence of prebiotic chemistry. DraMS will remotely study the chemical composition of samples from Titan's surface material, which will be drilled out by the Drill for Acquisition of Complex Organics (DrACO) and brought inside the lander's main body. DraMS will analyze the various chemical components of the samples by separating them into their base molecules and passing them through sensors for identification. The mission is set to launch in 2027 and arrive in the mid-2030s.