Theoretical origin of life: again hot sea vents (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, September 05, 2015, 19:17 (3367 days ago) @ David Turell

These vents can certainly form organic compounds:-https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28074-watery-time-capsule-hints-at-how-life-got-started-on-early-earth/-Her team has previously found a wealth of complex organic molecules in the water.-Now her colleague, Christopher Glein, has performed a raft of calculations to show that all of those molecules could have formed through perfectly feasible abiotic chemical reactions in the conditions found in such ancient hydrothermal vents.-His calculations show the conditions were particularly favourable for the formation of some key chemicals, including glyceraldehyde, one of the precursors of RNA and DNA, and pyruvate, which is important for cell metabolism.-Traditionally, biochemists have considered these molecules to be relatively hard to generate abiotically, says Glein who presented his findings at the Goldschmidt conference in Prague this week. “But that's assuming they are being synthesised under familiar conditions at Earth's surface,” he says.-Conditions are very different in the ancient hydrothermal vents, they found. The water there has reacted with the rock through a process called serpentinisation to create an environment poor in oxygen but rich in hydrogen, iron and sulphur. Combined with temperatures of about 100 °C - also found there - many complex organic compounds can easily form.-Comment: Complex organic compounds are not proteins. As I've noted before, life needs chains of organic molecules forming proteins by the process of polymerization. This will not happen automatically in water of any temperature without complex enzymes to help the process.