A fault with the origin of life
New research has shown that deep-reaching interconnected fault systems provide the right conditions for the origin of life.
The fluid mixture in the system, consisting of water, carbon dioxide and other gases, rises constantly to the surface potentially allowing different stages of synthesis and providing all necessary ingredients for prebiotic chemistry.
Professor Christian Mayer, leader of the research said: “It is the first model on the origin of life which includes a complete process leading from inorganic chemistry to a protocell where the problems of molecule formation, local concentration, driving force and membrane formation are being solved simultaneously”.
Up until now, the role of the earth’s crust in the origin of life has been largely ignored. The study by Mayer and Professor Ulrich Schreiber, researchers at the University of Duisburg-Essen, was based on traces of vesicles containing simple cell-like structures, found in minerals. Prof Schmitz examined traces in minerals that formed in fault zones in the early stages of the Earth’s formation and found that fluid inclusions (bubbles of liquid and gas that are trapped within crystals) contain large organic substances. The organic substances may have been encapsulated from the fluid contents of the fault zone during crystallisation. The fundamental stages of this proposed mechanism have already been reproduced in a laboratory.
Also the study published in the journal Origin of Life and the Evolution of Biospheres suggests that supercritical carbon dioxide may have acted as an organic solvent enabling reactions which would not occur in an aqueous environment. Mayer said: “Moreover, it forms interfaces with water and generates double-layer membranes which represent the most important single structural element of living cells”.
Work can continue on this theory as all proposed processes and chemical reactions still occur in tectonic faults and therefore may be detected and analysed.
Paper: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11084-012-9267-4
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