The short form, from NASA Astrobiology↱:
The press release from Scripps↱:
There are probably a few ways to look at this, but something that stands out to me has to do with Creationism and related pseudoscience: The thing about theology is that it's not really going to change much unless God happens to show up; compared to questions of evolution, the Creationist argument is somewhat closed, and cannot develop into something significantly different without vastly revising what is supposed to be immutable. It was easy enough to say, of science, that all the audience really needed to do was stay tuned.
Even still, the present moment feels kind of strange; Twitter hype is what it is, but reading through the Scripps release it gets harder to shake the sense that, yes, this one looks like it might be big.
It's one thing if I want to chuckle at the thought of God investing hyperuniform disorder in chickens, or marvel at suggestions of Lamarckian adaptation in mammals, and so on, but chemical reactions describing a transition into biotic chemistry make for something of a bellringer.
And the thing is, the politics really are nearly the last thing we ought to be worrying about, even if it is kind of a strange time in society. I just hear the word, "Science!" like from the Dolby song↱, echo and resound. It's hard to imagine how many pathways for scientific inquiry this paper opens, but it feels like something big.
____________________
Notes:
@NASAAstrobiology. "Discovery alert: #astrobiologists have found a new set of chemical reactions that could explain how life began on the early Earth. The research also helps bring together two sides of a long-standing debate about the importance of carbon dioxide to early life." Twitter. 1 August 2022. Twitter.com. 1 August 2022. https://bit.ly/3cZUL2z
Scripps Research. "Scripps Research scientists discover new 'origins of life' chemical reactions". Press Release. 28 July 2022. Scripps.edu. 1 August 2022. https://bit.ly/3BtnyXw
See Also:
Pulletikurt, Sunil, Mahipal Yadav, Greg Springsteen, and Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy. "Prebiotic synthesis of α-amino acids and orotate from α-ketoacids potentiates transition to extant metabolic pathways". Nature Chemistry. 28 July 2022. https://go.nature.com/3JoJxkj
Discovery alert: #astrobiologists have found a new set of chemical reactions that could explain how life began on the early Earth. The research also helps bring together two sides of a long-standing debate about the importance of carbon dioxide to early life.
The press release from Scripps↱:
"We've come up with a new paradigm to explain this shift from prebiotic to biotic chemistry," says Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy, PhD, an associate professor of chemistry at Scripps Research, and lead author of the new paper, published July 28, 2022 in the journal Nature Chemistry. "We think the kind of reactions we've described are probably what could have happened on early earth" ....
.... In cells today, amino acids are generated from precursors called α-keto acids using both nitrogen and specialized proteins called enzymes. Researchers have found evidence that α-keto acids likely existed early in Earth's history. However, many have hypothesized that before the advent of cellular life, amino acids must have been generated from completely different precursors, aldehydes, rather than α-keto acids, since enzymes to carry out the conversion did not yet exist. But that idea has led to debate about how and when the switch occurred from aldehydes to α-keto acids as the key ingredient for making amino acids ....
.... "We were expecting it to be quite difficult to figure this out, and it turned out to be even simpler than we had imagined," says Krishnamurthy. "If you mix only the keto acid, cyanide and ammonia, it just sits there. As soon as you add carbon dioxide, even trace amounts, the reaction picks up speed."
Because the new reaction is relatively similar to what occurs today inside cells—except for being driven by cyanide instead of a protein—it seems more likely to be the source of early life, rather than drastically different reactions, the researchers say. The research also helps bring together two sides of a long-standing debate about the importance of carbon dioxide to early life, concluding that carbon dioxide was key, but only in combination with other molecules.
In the process of studying their chemical soup, Krishnamurthy's group discovered that a byproduct of the same reaction is orotate, a precursor to nucleotides that make up DNA and RNA. This suggests that the same primordial soup, under the right conditions, could have given rise to a large number of the molecules that are required for the key elements of life.
.... In cells today, amino acids are generated from precursors called α-keto acids using both nitrogen and specialized proteins called enzymes. Researchers have found evidence that α-keto acids likely existed early in Earth's history. However, many have hypothesized that before the advent of cellular life, amino acids must have been generated from completely different precursors, aldehydes, rather than α-keto acids, since enzymes to carry out the conversion did not yet exist. But that idea has led to debate about how and when the switch occurred from aldehydes to α-keto acids as the key ingredient for making amino acids ....
.... "We were expecting it to be quite difficult to figure this out, and it turned out to be even simpler than we had imagined," says Krishnamurthy. "If you mix only the keto acid, cyanide and ammonia, it just sits there. As soon as you add carbon dioxide, even trace amounts, the reaction picks up speed."
Because the new reaction is relatively similar to what occurs today inside cells—except for being driven by cyanide instead of a protein—it seems more likely to be the source of early life, rather than drastically different reactions, the researchers say. The research also helps bring together two sides of a long-standing debate about the importance of carbon dioxide to early life, concluding that carbon dioxide was key, but only in combination with other molecules.
In the process of studying their chemical soup, Krishnamurthy's group discovered that a byproduct of the same reaction is orotate, a precursor to nucleotides that make up DNA and RNA. This suggests that the same primordial soup, under the right conditions, could have given rise to a large number of the molecules that are required for the key elements of life.
There are probably a few ways to look at this, but something that stands out to me has to do with Creationism and related pseudoscience: The thing about theology is that it's not really going to change much unless God happens to show up; compared to questions of evolution, the Creationist argument is somewhat closed, and cannot develop into something significantly different without vastly revising what is supposed to be immutable. It was easy enough to say, of science, that all the audience really needed to do was stay tuned.
Even still, the present moment feels kind of strange; Twitter hype is what it is, but reading through the Scripps release it gets harder to shake the sense that, yes, this one looks like it might be big.
It's one thing if I want to chuckle at the thought of God investing hyperuniform disorder in chickens, or marvel at suggestions of Lamarckian adaptation in mammals, and so on, but chemical reactions describing a transition into biotic chemistry make for something of a bellringer.
And the thing is, the politics really are nearly the last thing we ought to be worrying about, even if it is kind of a strange time in society. I just hear the word, "Science!" like from the Dolby song↱, echo and resound. It's hard to imagine how many pathways for scientific inquiry this paper opens, but it feels like something big.
____________________
Notes:
@NASAAstrobiology. "Discovery alert: #astrobiologists have found a new set of chemical reactions that could explain how life began on the early Earth. The research also helps bring together two sides of a long-standing debate about the importance of carbon dioxide to early life." Twitter. 1 August 2022. Twitter.com. 1 August 2022. https://bit.ly/3cZUL2z
Scripps Research. "Scripps Research scientists discover new 'origins of life' chemical reactions". Press Release. 28 July 2022. Scripps.edu. 1 August 2022. https://bit.ly/3BtnyXw
See Also:
Pulletikurt, Sunil, Mahipal Yadav, Greg Springsteen, and Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy. "Prebiotic synthesis of α-amino acids and orotate from α-ketoacids potentiates transition to extant metabolic pathways". Nature Chemistry. 28 July 2022. https://go.nature.com/3JoJxkj
