Theoretical origin of life: basaltic glass to the fore (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, June 10, 2022, 15:52 (685 days ago) @ David Turell

As a ground powder it makes long stands of RNA:

https://www.sciencemagazinedigital.org/sciencemagazine/10_june_2022/MobilePagedArticle....

"...they show how rocks called basaltic glasses help individual RNA letters, known as nucleoside triphosphates, link into strands up to 200 letters long. The glasses would have been abundant in the fire and brimstone of early Earth; they are created when lava is quenched in air or water or when the melted rock created in asteroid strikes cools off rapidly.

"The result has divided top origin-of-life researchers. “This seems to be a wonderful story that finally explains how the nucleoside triphosphates react with each other to give RNA strands,” says Thomas Carell, a chemist at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. But Jack Szostak, an RNA expert at Harvard University, says he won’t believe the result until the research team better characterizes the RNA strands.

***

"RNA also brings headaches. No one has found a set of plausible prebiotic conditions that would cause hundreds of RNA letters—each of them complex molecules—to link into strands long enough to support the complex chemistry needed to ignite evolution.

"Stephen Mojzsis, a geologist now at the Research Centre for Astronomy and Earth Sciences of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, wondered whether basaltic glasses played a role. They are rich in metals such as magnesium and iron that promote many chemical reactions. And, he says, “Basaltic glass was everywhere on Earth at the time.”

"He sent samples of five different basaltic glasses to the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution. There, Elisa Biondi, a molecular biologist, and her colleagues ground each sample into a fine powder, sterilized it, and mixed it with a solution of nucleoside triphosphates. Without a glass powder present, the RNA letters failed to link up. But when mixed with the glass powders, the molecules joined into long strands, some hundreds of letters long, the researchers report last week in Astrobiology. No heat or light was needed. “All we had to do was wait,” Biondi says. Small RNA strands formed after just a day, but strands kept growing for months. “The beauty of this model is its simplicity,” says Jan Špaček, a molecular biologist at Firebird Biomolecular Sciences. “Mix the ingredients, wait for a few days, and detect the RNA.” (my bolds)

"Still, the results leave questions unanswered. One is how the nucleoside triphosphates could have arisen in the first place. Biondi’s colleague Steven Benner says recent research shows how the same basaltic glasses could have promoted the formation and stabilization of the individual RNA letters.

"A bigger issue, Szostak says, is the shape of the RNA strands. In modern cells, enzymes ensure most RNAs grow into linear chains. But RNA can also bind in complex branching patterns. Szostak wants the researchers to report which type of RNA the basaltic glasses created."(my bold)

Comment: all done by supplying all the ingredients, mixing them properly. On early Earth wha magic genie was present to do this? The usual hopeful intellgent design in a lab!