https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-recreated-the-ancient-chemical-reactions-that-m...

"Life on Earth probably began in warm, underwater 'chemical gardens', rich in hydrogen and iron. Researchers from Germany have now simulated this environment in a vial, and found that archaic life forms that live in the deep sea today can thrive under these primordial conditions.

"It's difficult to imagine how life kicked off on our planet. In ecosystems today, life is so deeply entwined with itself that very few creatures live directly off Earth's raw materials. That has been the case for a very, very long time. (my bold)

"But the first organisms on an otherwise lifeless planet would have had to make do with what the mineral environment had to offer. There was little to no oxygen, and no photosynthesis.

***

"Borrowing electrons from hydrogen as it spews from the Earth's core, the deep-sea microbes follow a recipe more ancient than the genes they use to conduct it, called the acetyl CoA pathway. It is the only method for carbon fixation – processing inorganic carbon into organic compounds – that can be re-created without enzymes.(my bold)

***

"'The ancient occurrence of hydrothermal iron-sulfide rich deposits in the geological record extend into the early Archaean eon (4 to 3.6 billion years ago) and exhibit fossil features interpreted as some of the oldest signatures for life on Earth," the team writes in their paper describing the experiment.

"'However, links between abiotic H2 [dihydrogen] production in iron-sulfide chemical gardens simulating [primordial] hydrothermal systems and early life are scarce."

***

"'Abiotic H2 was a potentially important electron donor and CO2 served as a key electron acceptor for the first cells," the team explains. "Anaerobic organisms that use the H2-dependent reductive acetyl CoA pathway for CO2 fixation are modern representatives that have preserved vestiges of the first metabolisms."

***

"This is evidence that the recipe for acetyl CoA metabolism emerged from the extreme and energy-limited environments where Earth life may have struck its first sparks.

"'Our study points to mackinawite and greigite chemical gardens as potential hatcheries of life, primordial environments that could theoretically support a continuous evolution of the first metabolizing cells," the authors conclude.'

Comment: Amazing work to how early life invented mechanisms to live on very simple substrates. As an aside to dhw note: "In ecosystems today, life is so deeply entwined with itself that very few creatures live directly off Earth's raw materials. That has been the case for a very, very long time." When I have told you the ecosystems are exquisitely entwined this statement proves the point.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/04/250430142248.htm

"Most likely, the earliest ancestor of all life on Earth liked warm conditions, lived off hydrogen, and produced methane. LMU researchers have come to this conclusion based on fossil evidence and metabolic reconstructions using genetic analyses. This relatively simple, primordial acetyl-CoA metabolic pathway has survived in many microorganisms to this day.

***

"researchers led by Professor William Orsi from the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences created laboratory simulations of the conditions on the young Earth some 4 to 3.6 billion years ago. These conditions had some similarities to those prevailing today in the hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor known as "black smokers," with a key difference being that the ancient oceans were full of dissolved iron.

"In the laboratory experiment, the researchers produced miniature versions of such "black smokers." As it happens naturally at the seafloor, iron and sulfur geochemical reactions took place at high temperatures, forming iron sulfide minerals such as mackinawite (FeS) and greigite (Fe3S4) in a process that produced hydrogen gas (H2). In these "chemical gardens," the single-celled archaean Methanocaldococcus jannaschii was not only able to thrive, but positively exceeded the expectations of the researchers: "As well as overexpressing some genes of the acetyl-CoA metabolism, the archaeans actually grew exponentially," explains Vanessa Helmbrecht, lead author of the study, which has now been published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution. "At the beginning, we expected only slight growth, as we did not add any extra nutrients, vitamins, or trace metals to the experiment." The single-celled organism thus proved highly adept at utilizing the hydrogen gas produced by the abiotic precipitation of iron sulfides as an energy source.

"Isolated from the sediment of hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, the hyperthermophile microbe Methanocaldococcus jannaschii serves as a model organism for methanogenesis via the Acetyl-CoA metabolic pathway. It is an organism that is adapted to extreme conditions:

***

"The researchers conclude from the study's results that chemical reactions during the precipitation of iron sulfide minerals around four billion years ago generated sufficient energy for the survival of the very first cells and thus laid the foundations for the hydrogen-dependent metabolism of the first microbes on the young Earth. Accordingly, this form of methanogenesis based on hydrogen produced inorganically through chemical reactions is the oldest known form of energy generation in evolutionary history."

Comment: this is the most solid research of its kind in early life.. Life has arrived, mechanism unknown, and it uses methanogenesis for energy. All confined to the Archaea. Philosophically, it must be conceded the universe arrived seeking, expecting life to appear.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-everything-in-the-universe-turns-more-complex-20250402/

"They suspected that functional information was the key to understanding how complex systems like living organisms arise through evolutionary processes happening over time. “We all assumed the second law of thermodynamics supplies the arrow of time,” Hazen said. “But it seems like there’s a much more idiosyncratic pathway that the universe takes. We think it’s because of selection for function — a very orderly process that leads to ordered states. That’s not part of the second law, although it’s not inconsistent with it either.”

"Looked at this way, the concept of functional information allowed the team to think about the development of complex systems that don’t seem related to life at all.

***

"Hazen and Wong have shown(opens a new tab) that, even for minerals, functional information has increased over the course of Earth’s history. Minerals evolve toward greater complexity (though not in the Darwinian sense). Hazen and colleagues speculate that complex forms of carbon such as graphene might form in the hydrocarbon-rich environment of Saturn’s moon Titan — another example of an increase in functional information that doesn’t involve life.

***

"Wong said their work implies three main conclusions.

First, biology is just one example of evolution. “There is a more universal description that drives the evolution of complex systems.”

"Second, he said, there might be “an arrow in time that describes this increasing complexity,” similar to the way the second law of thermodynamics, which describes the increase in entropy, is thought to create a preferred direction of time.

"Finally, Wong said, “information itself might be a vital parameter of the cosmos, similar to mass, charge and energy.”

"In the work Hazen and Szostak conducted on evolution using artificial-life algorithms, the increase in functional information was not always gradual. Sometimes it would happen in sudden jumps. That echoes what is seen in biological evolution. Biologists have long recognized transitions where the complexity of organisms increases abruptly. One such transition was the appearance of organisms with cellular nuclei (around 1.8 billion to 2.7 billion years ago). Then there was the transition to multicellular organisms (around 2 billion to 1.6 billion years ago), the abrupt diversification of body forms in the Cambrian explosion (540 million years ago), and the appearance of central nervous systems (around 600 million to 520 million years ago). The arrival of humans was arguably another major and rapid evolutionary transition. (my bold)

***

"Ricard Solé of the Santa Fe Institute thinks such jumps might be equivalent to phase transitions in physics, such as the freezing of water or the magnetization of iron: They are collective processes with universal features, and they mean that everything changes, everywhere, all at once. In other words, in this view there’s a kind of physics of evolution — and it’s a kind of physics we know about already.

***

"Yet finding new uses for existing components is precisely what evolution does. Feathers did not evolve for flight, for example. This repurposing reflects how biological evolution is jerry-rigged, making use of what’s available. (my bold)

***

"Kauffman argues that biological evolution is thus constantly creating not just new types of organisms but new possibilities for organisms, ones that not only did not exist at an earlier stage of evolution but could not possibly have existed. From the soup of single-celled organisms that constituted life on Earth 3 billion years ago, no elephant could have suddenly emerged — this required a whole host of preceding, contingent but specific innovations.

***

"If Hazen and colleagues are right that evolution involving any kind of selection inevitably increases functional information — in effect, complexity — does this mean that life itself, and perhaps consciousness and higher intelligence, is inevitable in the universe? That would run counter to what some biologists have thought. The eminent evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr believed that the search for extraterrestrial intelligence was doomed because the appearance of humanlike intelligence is “utterly improbable.” After all, he said, if intelligence at a level that leads to cultures and civilizations were so adaptively useful in Darwinian evolution, how come it only arose once across the entire tree of life? (my bold)"

Comment: this article makes the point that feathers appear before a use is found and many such events occur in evolution, A designer explains all of this. An extraordinary article I had to eviscerate. The whole piece is amazing.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/03/250325115650.htm

"Along with nitrogen and carbon, phosphorus is an essential element for life on Earth. It is a central component of molecules such as DNA and RNA, which serve to transmit and store genetic information, and ATP (adenosine triphosphate), which cells need to produce energy.

"Phosphorus may also have played a key role in the origin of life. Certain conditions are needed to trigger the start of the biochemical processes that precede life. One of these is the presence of sufficient phosphorus. Its availability regulates the growth and activities of organisms. Unlike nitrogen or carbon, however, phosphorus is relatively rare at Earth's surface -- which was the case in the era before life existed as well as today.

***

"...they conducted experiments in the laboratory. These showed that prebiotic chemistry requires very high concentrations of phosphorus -- about 10,000 times more phosphorus than naturally occurs in water. This raises the question of how and where such high concentrations of phosphorus in water occurred on Earth billions of years ago.

"Earth scientist Craig Walton has a new answer: large soda lakes without natural runoff could maintain phosphorus concentrations for a sufficiently long time, even if life begins to exist in them at some point (and continuously consumes phosphorus).

"Such lakes lose water only through evaporation. This means that phosphorus is left in the water instead of being washed away through rivers and streams. As a result, very high concentrations of phosphorus can build up in these soda lakes.

***

"In large soda lakes, the phosphorus concentrations are high enough to sustain both the basic chemical reactions and life over the long term. These high concentrations are achieved through a high volume of inflowing river water, which contains phosphorus, while water only leaves the lake through evaporation. Since phosphorus does not evaporate easily, it stays behind and accumulates in the lake.

***

"The origin of life could therefore be closely linked to the special environment of large soda lakes, which, due to their geological setting and phosphorus balance, provided ideal conditions for prebiotic chemistry. "This new theory helps to solve another piece of the puzzle of the origin of life on Earth," says Walton."

Comment: a new and interesting approach. Land-based fossils do not support the idea. I still favor deep sea vents.

https://www.sciencealert.com/extreme-feast-and-famine-cycle-sparked-explosion-of-life-o...

"Imagine a world where the oxygen you need changes dramatically between day and night.

"Now, picture early animals trying to survive in such an extreme environment. This was the reality for early animal life in oceans and seas about half a billion years ago. This was also the time when animal diversity boomed, in what is known as the "Cambrian explosion".

"My team's new research suggests that these drastic oxygen fluctuations played a crucial role in this dramatic period.

***

"Our new study reveals a different, often overlooked factor. Daily swings in oxygen levels on the shallow seafloor may have stressed early animals (the ancestors of all animal life today), pushing them to adapt in ways that fuelled diversification.

"Rather than good conditions driving the change, we argue that harsh conditions triggered this.

"We used a computer model that can mimic conditions on the sunlit seafloor today. This model takes into account what life can produce or consume, but also how temperature, sunlight, and different types of sediment or water affect the overall conditions.

"Using this so-called "biogeochemical model", we have shown that in warm, shallow waters, oxygen levels could fluctuate dramatically between day and night in the Cambrian (when oxygen was generally lower than today).

"During the day, photosynthesis by marine algae produced lots of oxygen, creating a fully oxygenated environment. But at night, when photosynthesis stopped because there was no light, oxygen was instead rapidly consumed by the algae as they respired (using energy and oxygen to perform cell functions), leading to anoxic conditions.

"This daily feast-and-famine cycle in oxygen availability created an intense physiological challenge for early animals, forcing them to develop adaptations to handle fluctuations in nutrients. For those that could deal with these fluctuations, adaptation gave them a competitive edge.

***

"Physiological stress is often seen as an obstacle to survival. But it can be a catalyst for evolutionary innovation. Even today, species that endure extreme environments often develop specialist traits that make them more adaptable.

"Our study suggests a similar pattern played out in the Cambrian. Animals evolved ways to cope with the stress of fluctuating oxygen levels on the smörgåsbord of the shallow seafloor shelves.

"One key adaptation could have been the ability to efficiently sense and respond to oxygen fluctuations.

"This trait is regulated by a cellular control system – a molecular pathway that adapts how the cell responds to external conditions. The control system that may have emerged at the Cambrian explosion is known as HIF-1α (hypoxia-inducible factor 1).

***

"Our modelling suggests that animals with advanced oxygen-sensing mechanisms would have had a survival advantage in the fluctuating conditions of the Cambrian seafloor, allowing them to outcompete species without this capability.

***

"The ability to cope with these rapid changes may have allowed certain animal lineages to thrive over others, leading to the emergence of more complex and adaptable life forms.

"Today, all animals with tissues as we know them (several layers of cells) use HIF to maintain regular maintenance or steady state (known as homeostasis). This molecular pathway is critical for building tissues and healing tissues.

***

"This new model challenges traditional views that focus solely on large-scale geological changes as the primary drivers of early animal evolution.

"Local-scale challenges faced by individual organisms – such as surviving daily swings between oxygen-rich and oxygen-starved conditions – could have been just as important in shaping the course of evolution."

Comment: for once, a logical set of reasons for developing early life forms. Today's extremophiles show how they modify to handle stressful environments.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2472382-the-surprising-new-idea-behind-what-sparke...

"The first molecules necessary for life on Earth could have been created when tiny flickers of “microlightning” between drops of water sparked the necessary chemical reactions.

“'This is a new way to think about how the building blocks of life were formed,” says Richard Zare at Stanford University in California.

***

“'If you look at the gases that people thought were around on early Earth, they don’t contain carbon-nitrogen bonds,” says Zare. “They are gases like methane, water, ammonia and nitrogen.”

***

"Zare and his colleagues have sprayed droplets of water into a mix of methane, carbon dioxide, ammonia and nitrogen gas – and have shown it can result in the formation of organic molecules with carbon-nitrogen bonds, with no external electricity source needed.

"It works because the droplets in the water spray produce small electrical charges, says Zare. “The smaller droplets are negatively charged, the larger ones are positively charged,” he says. This is down to something called the Lenard effect, in which water droplets, such as those in a waterfall, collide and break up, generating an electrical charge.

***

“'When the water droplets come within nanometres of each other, you get an electric field and this electric field causes the breakdown,” he says.

"The flashes of microlightning carried enough energy – about 12 electronvolts – to make gas molecules lose an electron and react with one another, generating organic molecules with carbon-nitrogen bonds, including hydrogen cyanide, the amino acid glycine and uracil, one of the components of RNA.

***

"The work implies that tiny sparks made by crashing waves or waterfalls would have been enough to provide the chemicals needed for life to start on this planet, says Zare.

"Water sprays are ubiquitous and often land on rocks, which would allow the organic chemicals to accumulate in their crevices, he says. The area would then dry out and get damp again. Such wet-dry cycles are known to make shorter molecules combine, or polymerise, into longer ones.

“'The study suggests that microlightning would have been abundant in early Earth’s water-rich environments, and may have driven prebiotic chemistry, especially where other energy sources, such as lightning or UV radiation, were scarce,” says Kumar Vanka at the National Chemical Laboratory in Pune, India."

Comment: a novel way precursor chemicals might have appeared, but it still is giant steps to life itself. I still favor ocean vents as the likeliest origin spots.

https://www.sciencemagazinedigital.org/sciencemagazine/library/item/28_february_2025/42...

"Be they microbes or monkeys, organisms require phosphorus—and lots of it. It’s a key component of DNA and RNA, of the ATP that fuels living cells, and of the lipids that make up cell membranes. The element’s centrality has long puzzled researchers trying to understand early life, because phosphorus isn’t naturally abundant in most watery environments, the kind of place where life probably began. Now, a trio of new papers supports a recent proposal that volcanic activity around highly alkaline “soda“ lakes—and perhaps hot springs—could have enabled phosphorus compounds to accumulate to levels needed for life to start and spread.

***

"...although the new papers offer a plausible route to solving what has long been known as the “phosphorus problem,” researchers still need to show that compounds generated under these conditions actually undergo reactions resembling rudimentary biochemistry. Geochemist Matthew Pasek of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute agrees, but adds: “I think we are much further along than we were before.”

"The recognition that phosphorus availability was a likely bottleneck on the road to life dates as far back as 1955, to a paper by American biochemist Addison Gulick. The origin of life would probably have required high concentrations of compounds such as phosphate—a phosphorus atom surrounded by four oxygens. In oceans, rivers, and most lakes the phosphate concentration is typically 10,000 times too low.

"Early Earth was different, though. Phosphorus is present in volcanic lavas, and the young planet had a lot more volcanic activity than today. In a series of lab studies reported in September 2024 in Communications Earth & Environment, Pasek and his colleagues found that reactions between iron-rich volcanic rocks and water at high temperatures— like those found in a hot spring, or hydrothermal, environment on land—convert phosphorus to a range of different phosphates. If the hot spring periodically dried up, it might concentrate phosphates enough to promote vital biochemical reactions.

"Soda lakes are another place that could happen, as University of Washington earth scientists David Catling and Jonathan Toner first proposed in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2020. Such lakes also form in volcanic environments, in closed basins filled by runoff that has weathered sodium and carbonate—the ingredients of baking soda—out of volcanic rocks. With no outflow, the lakes lose water only to evaporation, which concentrates the chemicals over time.

***

“'This is a major barrier,” says Craig Walton of the University of Cambridge. He and his colleagues recently analyzed much larger soda lakes, including Mono Lake in California, which is 21 kilometers long and up to 17 meters deep. Phosphate levels there are far higher than in nonsoda lakes, the researchers reported last week in Science Advances, although they don’t rival the phosphate concentrations in the British Columbia ponds. But Mono and its peers offer a much more stable supply. “These large-scale lakes give you a bit of both,” Walton says.

"To him, the combination of volcanic activity and soda lakes is “pretty close to a geological solution” to the phosphorus problem. Pasek thinks hydrothermal pools probably played a role, too. “There is room for both,” he says. But with any proposal about how life began billions of years ago, Preiner advises humility. “There’s uncertainty here that we just have to live with.'”

Comment: this finding drives us to the conclusion that hydrothermal vents in the ocean floor would have provided phosphorous for the origin of life. Only oceans provided a continuous environment for any life forms that might appear.

https://www.sciencealert.com/a-hidden-process-in-hot-springs-may-have-been-vital-for-li...

"Research has often focused on the role of deep-sea hydrothermal vents – those towering structures on the ocean floor constantly pumping out a melange of organic and inorganic material.

"Within these plumes are minerals called iron sulfides, which scientists believe could have helped trigger early chemical reactions that created life.

"These same minerals are also found in hot springs today, such as the Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park in the United States. Hot springs are bodies of groundwater heated by volcanic activity beneath Earth's surface.

"Our new research adds to a small but growing body of evidence that ancient versions of these hot springs could have played a pivotal role in the emergence of life on Earth. This helps bridge the gap between competing hypotheses regarding where life could have emerged.

"Carbon fixation is the process by which living organisms convert carbon dioxide, in the air and dissolved in water, into organic molecules.

"Many life forms, including plants, bacteria and microorganisms known as archaea, have different pathways for achieving this. Photosynthesis is one example.

"Each of these pathways contains a cascade of enzymes and proteins, some of which contain cores made of iron and sulfur.

"We can find proteins with these iron-sulfur clusters in all forms of life. In fact, researchers propose they date back to the Last Universal Common Ancestor – an ancient ancestral cell from which scientists propose life as we know it evolved and diversified.

***

"If you look closely at the structure of these iron sulfides, you will find that some of them look incredibly similar to iron-sulfur clusters.

"This connection between iron sulfides and carbon fixation has led some researchers to propose that these minerals played a crucial role in the transition from early Earth geochemistry to biology.

"Our newly published research expands on this knowledge by investigating the chemical activity of iron sulfides in ancient land-based hot springs which have similar geochemistry to deep-sea vents.

***

"Carbon dioxide and hydrogen gas were constantly pumped through the chamber. These gases have been shown to be important for carbon fixation in deep-sea vent experiments.

"We found that all of the iron sulfide samples synthesised were capable of producing methanol, a product of carbon fixation, to varying extents. These results showed that iron sulfides can facilitate carbon fixation not only in deep-sea hydrothermal vents but land-based hot springs too.

"Methanol production also increased with visible light irradiation and at higher temperatures.

"xperiments with varying temperatures, lighting and water-vapour content demonstrated that iron sulfides likely facilitated carbon fixation in land-based hot springs on early Earth.

"Additional experiments and theoretical calculations revealed that the production of methanol occurred through a mechanism called a reverse water-gas shift.

"We see a similar reaction in the pathway some bacteria and archaea use to turn carbon dioxide into food. This pathway is called the "acetyl-CoA" or "Wood-Ljungdahl" pathway. It is proposed to be the earliest form of carbon fixation that emerged in early life.

"This similarity between the two processes is interesting because the former happens on dry land, at the edge of hot springs, while the latter takes place in the wet environment inside cells.

"ur study demonstrates methanol production in a wide range of conditions that could have been found in early Earth's hot springs.

"Our findings expand the range of conditions where iron sulfides can facilitate carbon fixation. They show it can happen both in the deep sea and on land – albeit via different mechanisms.

"As such, we believe these results support the current scientific consensus suggesting that iron-sulfur clusters and the acetyl-CoA pathway are ancient and likely played an important role in the emergence of life – regardless of whether it happened on land or at the bottom of the sea."

Comment: most studies on origin of life are made up lab designs of little validity. This, on the other hand, is a highly valid finding.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-cosmos-teems-with-complex-organic-molecules-20241113/

"The Rosetta mission and others have shown just how ubiquitous organic molecules are in space, too.

“'Rosetta really changed the view,” said Nora Hänni(opens a new tab), a chemist at the University of Bern who has been analyzing data from the probe. When Hänni and her colleagues processed just one day’s worth of the probe’s data in 2022, they uncovered(opens a new tab) 44 different organic molecules. Some were very complex, containing 20 atoms or more. Rosetta caught whiffs of glycine(opens a new tab), one of the amino acid building blocks of proteins. And more recently, Hänni used Rosetta data to identify dimethyl sulfide(opens a new tab) — a gas that, on Earth, is only known to be produced by living organisms.

"What Rosetta did for comets, Japan’s Hayabusa2 and NASA’s Osiris-Rex are doing for asteroids. In 2020 and 2023, respectively, the two missions scooped up samples of the asteroids Bennu and Ryugu and returned the samples to Earth. Scientists have been sifting through the material ever since, and they find that both asteroids sport plenty of organic molecules. Ryugu alone contains at least 20,000 kinds(opens a new tab), including 15 different amino acids.

***

"By sending probes to sample primordial comets and asteroids, peering into planet-forming disks with telescopes, and re-creating spacelike conditions in labs and computer models, scientists are uncovering the origins of complex organic molecules. Their findings indicate that planets like ours likely inherit much of their organic material from a time before the sun.

"Last year, researchers glimpsed the earliest known occurrence of organic chemistry in the universe. The James Webb Space Telescope observed a young galaxy, seeing it as it appeared just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang, and detected polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons(opens a new tab) — hefty molecules that look a bit like honeycombs. On Earth, they’re found in anything involving tar, from fossil fuels to wood smoke. In space, they’re components of asteroids — including those that fall to Earth as meteorites — and of interstellar dust.

***

"There’s a second major formation pathway. As generations of stars have lived, died and spilled their innards into space, some of their carbon has ended up in molecular clouds — patches of space where motes of gas and dust crowd close enough together to block out light. Here, organic molecules form within the icy crusts of tiny dust grains. “You can build complexity without much going on in just a cold, dark cloud,” said Alice Booth(opens a new tab), an astronomer at Harvard.

***

"The upshot, according to Booth, is that even billions of years before the sun was born, “you can form pretty complex molecules,” she said. “What we don’t really know is how all of that complexity at early times translates to later times.”

***

"Only recently did scientists get their first glimpses of organic molecules within protoplanetary disks — the rotating frisbees of gas and dust that spin around newborn stars. “Every disk is a gold mine,” Öberg said. In one of these observations, Booth and her colleagues found abundant methanol(opens a new tab) within a nearby planet-forming disk. This methanol could only have formed on grains of carbon monoxide–rich ice, which would have filled the cold molecular cloud from which the protoplanetary disk came but would then have vaporized in the warm disk. So, Booth said, the methanol must have come from the cloud that predated the new star and its planets.

***

"Researchers have wanted to computationally model the churn and tumble of disk material, but it’s so computationally costly to do so that “until we absolutely had to, we have sort of been avoiding those [studies],” Öberg said. That’s changing now. In 2024 a team of scientists including Booth published initial results of computer models showing(opens a new tab) that complex organics can form rapidly in protoplanetary disks. In particular, the molecules assemble in the same “dust traps” where planetesimals, the asteroid-size building blocks of planets, coalesce. The results provide a tantalizing link between the formation of organics and planets.

***

"For decades, scientists have known that meteorites called chondrites, which originate from asteroids, contain a staggering diversity of organic molecules. The Murchison meteorite, which fell in Australia in 1969, contains more than 96 different amino acids. Life uses just 20 or so. Osiris-Rex and Hayabusa2 have confirmed that the asteroids Bennu and Ryugu are as complex as those meteorites. And at least some of this complexity seems to have arisen before the asteroids themselves: A preliminary analysis(opens a new tab) of the Bennu sample suggests it retained organic material, including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, from the protoplanetary disk.

***

"...as comets and asteroids reveal, the nonliving world is complex in its own right. Compounds thought to be biosignatures have been found on lifeless rocks, like the dimethyl sulfide Hänni’s team recently identified on 67P."

Comment: the non-living world is filled with organic molecules. Living matter was destined, but we just don't know how it happened

https://www.science.org/content/article/lab-created-protocells-provide-clues-how-life-a...

"For life to arise from Earth’s primordial ingredients, early cells needed some way to keep their contents from simply drifting away. All modern cells package their innards inside a complex, double-layered membrane made of lipids, and scientists have long wondered how the structure first coalesced from simple molecules. A study out today in Nature Chemistry offers a new recipe to explain how short lipids might have spawned the first cell membranes.

"The result is “fascinating,” says biochemist Sheref Mansy of the University of Trento, who wasn’t connected to the research. “It opens up a new avenue” for understanding how primordial cells appeared.

"Today, the main components of most cell membranes are complex, hefty molecules called phospholipids. The first cells probably relied instead on simpler lipids, possibly molecules known as fatty acids. They contain chains of carbon atoms, and versions with 10 or more carbons can spontaneously coalesce into membranes in the lab. But there’s a catch: Such lipids were probably extremely rare on early Earth.

***

"Previous work from Devaraj’s lab showed the amino acid cysteine, which was also likely prevalent during our planet’s youth, can act like a chemical clamp, fastening certain precursor molecules together to yield lipids.

"In the new study, the researchers combined cysteine with chemical relatives of fatty acids containing eight carbons apiece. The amino acid reacted with the molecules, forming lipids with two tails—the phospholipids in modern membranes also sport similar double tails. Some of these lipids congregated into membrane-covered spheres known as protocells, the team reports. Although the empty compartments aren’t cells—they lack metabolism and a mechanism for heredity, among other attributes—they may mimic a stage in cellular evolution.

"The researchers noticed something else that might be relevant to the origin of the first cells: The protocells readily assembled on glass coverslips for microscope slides. Glass contains silica, as do sand and certain types of clay that would have been present on primordial Earth. Devaraj speculates the silica in such materials may have similarly sparked formation of early membranes.

"The protocells’ membranes displayed other similarities to those of genuine cells. For instance, phospholipids in modern cell membranes align themselves in a double layer. The thickness of the membranes in the researchers’ protocells suggested the lipids adopted the same arrangement. A membrane also corrals important molecules within a cell, an ability the scientists showed the protocells have as well.

"Devaraj and colleagues found that their protocells’ membranes could withstand the levels of calcium and magnesium ions likely present on primordial Earth, a key attribute as the ions are key to the function of RNA, which may have served as the earliest carrier of genetic information and the first enzymes. When the researchers outfitted the protocells with types modern RNAs that act as enzymes, the molecules catalyzed chemical reactions inside the spheres."

Comment: one must use the exact length of eight molecules each, add cysteine and get a welcome result. All of this must happen on a barren Earth by chance! Just providing a membrane without a metabolism doesn't come close to making a cell.

https://www.sciencealert.com/astronomers-discover-complex-carbon-molecules-in-interstel...

"A team led by researchers at MIT in the United States has discovered large molecules containing carbon in a distant interstellar cloud of gas and dust.

***

"But it's more than just another molecule for the collection. The result, reported today in the journal Science, shows that complex organic molecules (with carbon and hydrogen) likely existed in the cold, dark gas cloud that gave rise to our Solar System.

"Furthermore, the molecules held together until after the formation of Earth. This is important for our understanding of the early origins of life on our planet.

"The molecule in question is called pyrene, a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon or PAH for short. The complicated-sounding name tells us these molecules are made of rings of carbon atoms.

"Carbon chemistry is the backbone of life on Earth. PAHs have long been known to be abundant in the interstellar medium, so they feature prominently in theories of how carbon-based life on Earth came to be.

***

"Pyrene is now the largest PAH detected in space, although it's what is known as a "small" or simple PAH, with 26 atoms. It was long thought such molecules could not survive the harsh environment of star formation when everything is bathed in radiation from the newborn suns, destroying complex molecules.

"In fact, it was once thought molecules of more than two atoms could not exist in space for this reason, until they were actually found. Also, chemical models show pyrene is very difficult to destroy once formed.

"Last year, scientists reported they found large amounts of pyrene in samples from the asteroid Ryugu in our own Solar System. They argued at least some of it must have come from the cold interstellar cloud that predated our Solar System.

"So why not look at another cold interstellar cloud to find some? The problem for astrophysicists is that we don't have the tools to detect pyrene directly – it's invisible to radio telescopes.

***

"The amount of pyrene they found was significant. Importantly, this discovery in the Taurus molecular cloud suggests a lot of pyrene exists in the cold, dark molecular clouds that go on to form stars and solar systems.

***

"Simple life – consisting of a single cell – appeared in Earth's fossil record almost immediately (in geological and astronomical terms) after the planet's surface had cooled enough to not vaporise complex molecules. This happened more than 3.7 billion years ago in Earth's approximately 4.5 billion history.

"For simple organisms to then appear so quickly in the fossil record, there's just not enough time for chemistry to start with mere simple molecules of two or three atoms.

"The new discovery of 1-cyanopyrene in the Taurus molecular cloud shows complex molecules could indeed survive the harsh conditions of our Solar System's formation. As a result, pyrene was available to form the backbone of carbon-based life when it emerged on the early Earth some 3.7 billion years ago.

"This discovery also links to another important finding of the last decade – the first chiral molecule in the interstellar medium, propylene oxide. We need chiral molecules to make the evolution of simple lifeforms work on the surface of the early Earth.

"So far, our theories that molecules for early life on Earth came from space are looking good."

Comment: The 'tool' folks are always cheerful that the answers are right around the corner. Simple life isn't so simple.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/in-a-first-scientists-find-animals-thriving-b...

"In summer 2023, researchers deployed a remotely-operated underwater vehicle called SuBastian to investigate hydrothermal vents on the southeastern Pacific Ocean floor. But when SuBastian flipped over a small section of ocean crust, the team discovered something unexpected beneath it: Worms, snails and other marine invertebrates were living in cavities under the seafloor.

“'To our knowledge, it is the first time that animal life has been discovered in the ocean crust,” Sabine Gollner, a marine biologist at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research,

***

"Back in 2023, the researchers unleashed SuBastian from a Schmidt Ocean Institute research vessel to understand how tubeworms—narrow-bodied creatures that form iconic, towering colonies—spread from vent to vent. As adults, the worms anchor themselves to the seafloor. But scientists wondered if, during their unanchored larval stage, young tubeworms might spread through cavities beneath the seabed formed by the vapor created when lava comes into contact with seawater.

***

"The team directed SuBastian to dig up parts of the seafloor 1.56 miles beneath the surface of the ocean near the Fava Flow Vents on the East Pacific Rise. That was when they found life: The sub-seafloor cavities of water mixed with magma were filled with giant tubeworms—both larvae and adults—carnivorous bristle worms, sediment-eating snails and more.

***

"While scientists had previously identified animals living above the seafloor near hydrothermal vents, this was the first time animals had been found living underground near the vents—only microbes had been seen there before, per National Geographic’s Olivia Ferrari.

"SuBastian’s exploring revealed those unexpected findings, but it also shed light on the team’s central question about tubeworms.

“'The fact that live large tubeworms were found means that the hypothesis of larvae being able to colonize vents from below has been confirmed,” marine biologist Monika Bright of the University of Vienna, a co-lead author of the study, tells ScienceAlert’s Michelle Starr. “Some settle if conditions are right in the subsurface, some might with the vent flow be flushed out from the subsurface and colonize the surface.”

***

"The cavities were about four inches beneath the seafloor and filled with 77 degree Fahrenheit water. But scientists still aren’t sure how far these cavities extend, both horizontally and vertically. Microbes might be able to live more than six miles below the seabed, but animals likely have a smaller range."

Comment: think of living at those presdsures.

https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-discover-how-complex-molecules-may-have-stabili...

"Highly reactive complex molecules finding some sort of stability was a necessary step towards life getting started on Earth. Scientists think they've just discovered how these first began to stay intact and spark the journey towards organisms.

"We haven't been able to explain how the simple molecules that would've been floating around in the primordial waters of early Earth eventually latched on to each other long enough to form something as complex as RNA (ribonucleic acid).

"So researchers in Germany created conditions to match ancient Earth in their laboratory. They focused on RNA-like units, synthetic chemical components capable of combining with each other in different combinations to create evolving strings of 'information', just like our own genetic material.

"'We know which molecules existed on the early Earth," says chemist Job Boekhoven, from the Technical University of Munich. "The question is: can we use this to replicate the origins of life in the lab?"

"When exposed to a 'fuel' of high-energy molecules, the synthesized RNA-like units joined up and broke down constantly in various configurations and scenarios. By themselves, they did not remain connected for very long.

"What ultimately made the difference to molecule stabilization in the experiments was the introduction of additional short strands of preformed DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) 'templates'. This enabled more complex molecules to form more often and also last longer, pairing up with the template to create more stable double-stranded molecules.

"'The exciting part is that double strands lead to RNA folding, which can make the RNA catalytically active," says Boekhoven.

"With the preformed DNA added, the researchers noticed something approaching natural selection, which could explain how simple molecules were plucked out of the ooze and chosen to start the beginnings of life: structures that can move, sustain themselves, self-replicate, and adapt to their environment.

"Incredibly, the researchers then showed that once the template copying process started to take place it could change the properties of the membrane around them.

"The next question is how these DNA templates or strands might have come into being. That's a topic for a future study, but the researchers are investigating several ideas about how this structure for self-assembly could have appeared. (my bold)

***

"This latest research adds to what has been discovered in earlier studies, about the way RNA might have been able to replicate and add complexity on its own, and the role that DNA might have played too.

"It's another reminder of the power and potential of modern-day scientific methods, through which we can approximately simulate conditions from billions of years ago – and speed up the processes that would've been happening then." (my bold)

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/09/240925123545.htm

"Researchers have discovered inorganic nanostructures surrounding deep-ocean hydrothermal vents that are strikingly similar to molecules that make life as we know it possible. These nanostructures are self-organized and act as selective ion channels, which create energy that can be harnessed in the form of electricity. The findings impact not only our understanding of how life began, but can also be applied to industrial blue-energy harvesting. (my bold--this study does none of the sort)

"Researchers led by Ryuhei Nakamura at the RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science (CSRS) in Japan and The Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) of Tokyo Institute of Technology have discovered inorganic nanostructures surrounding deep-ocean hydrothermal vents that are strikingly similar to molecules that make life as we know it possible. These nanostructures are self-organized and act as selective ion channels, which create energy that can be harnessed in the form of electricity. Published Sep. 25 in Nature Communications, the findings impact not only our understanding of how life began, but can also be applied to industrial blue-energy harvesting. (my bold)

***

"The team used an electrode to record the current-voltage of the samples. When the samples were exposed to high concentrations of potassium chloride, the conductance was proportional to the salt concentration at the surface of the nanopores. But at lower concentrations, the conductance was constant, not proportional, and was determined by the local electrical charge of the precipitate's surface. This charge-governed ion transport is very similar to voltage-gated ion channels observed in living cells like neurons.

***

"'The spontaneous formation of ion channels discovered in deep-sea hydrothermal vents has direct implications for the origin of life on Earth and beyond," says Nakamura. "In particular, our study shows how osmotic energy conversion, a vital function in modern life, can occur abiotically in a geological environment."

"Industrial power plants use salinity gradients between seawater and river water to generate energy, a process called blue-energy harvesting. According to Nakamura, understanding how nanopore structure is spontaneously generated in the hydrothermal vents could help engineers devise better synthetic methods for generating electrical energy from osmotic conversion."

Comment: pitiful. Just because it looks like something doesn't mean it applies in the same way! OOL research is in such a dead end, contorting any study to look like OOL may help is finding grant funds. This study actually stands on its own.

https://phys.org/news/2024-10-scientists-plausible-geological-life-earth.html

"Researchers have discovered a plausible evolutionary setting in which nucleic acids—the fundamental genetic building blocks of life—could enable their own replication, possibly leading to life on Earth.

"The study, published today as a Reviewed Preprint in eLife, was described by editors as important work with convincing evidence to show how a simple geophysical setting of gas flow over a narrow channel of water can create a physical environment that leads to the replication of nucleic acids. The work will be of interest to scientists working on the origin of life, and more broadly, on nucleic acids and diagnostic applications.

***

"...strands of RNA need not only to replicate into a double-stranded form, but also to separate again to complete the replication cycle. Strand separation, however, is a difficult task at the high salt and nucleic acid concentrations required for replication.

"'Various mechanisms have been studied for their potential to separate DNA strands at the origin of life, but they all require temperature changes that would lead to degradation of nucleic acids," says lead author Philipp Schwintek.

***

"'We investigated a simple and ubiquitous geological scenario where water movement through a rock pore was dried by a gas percolating through the rock to reach the surface. Such a setting would be very common on volcanic islands on early Earth which offered the necessary dry conditions for RNA synthesis."

"The team built a laboratory model of the rock pore featuring an upward water flux evaporating at an intersection with a perpendicular gas flux, which leads to an accumulation of dissolved gas molecules at the surface. At the same time, the gas flux induces circular currents in the water, forcing molecules back into the bulk. To understand how this model would affect nucleic acids within the environment, they used beads to monitor the dynamics of the water flow and then tracked the movement of fluorescently labeled short DNA fragments. (my bold)

"'Our expectation was that continuous evaporation would lead to an accumulation of DNA strands at the interface," says Schwintek. "Indeed, we found that water continuously evaporated at the interface but the nucleic acids in the aqueous face accumulated near the gas/water interface." Within five minutes of starting the experiment, there was a three-fold accumulation of DNA strands, whereas after an hour, there were 30 times more DNA strands accumulated at the interface.

"Although this suggests that the gas/water interface allows for a sufficient concentration of nucleic acids for replication to occur, separation of the double DNA strands is also necessary. Usually a change in temperature is required, but when the temperature is constant, changes in salt concentration are necessary.

"'We hypothesized that the circular fluid flow at the interface provided by the gas flux, alongside passive diffusion, would drive strand separation by forcing the nucleic acids through areas with different salt concentrations," explains senior author Dieter Braun, Professor of Systems Biophysics at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.

***

"Although nucleic acids and salts accumulated near the gas-water interface, in the bulk of the water the concentrations of salt and nucleic acids remained vanishingly low. This prompted the team to test whether nucleic acid replication could really happen in this environment, by adding nucleic acids labeled with a fluorescent dye and an enzyme that can synthesize double-stranded DNA into the laboratory model of the rock pore. Unlike normal laboratory DNA synthesis reactions, the temperature was maintained at a constant temperature and the reaction was instead exposed to the combined water and gas influx.

"After two hours, the fluorescent signal had increased, indicating an increased number of replicated double-stranded DNA molecules. Yet, when the gas and water influx were switched off, no increase in fluorescence signals was observed, and therefore no increase in double-stranded DNA was seen.

"'In this work we investigated a plausible and abundant geological environment that could trigger the replication of early life," concludes Braun. "We considered a setting of gas flowing over an open rock pore filled with water, without any change in temperature, and found that the combined gas and water flow can trigger salt fluctuations which support DNA replication. (my bold)

"'Since this is a very simple geometry, our findings greatly extend the repertoire of potential environments that could enable replication on early planets.'"

Comment: this is a totally laughable waste of grant money. IF DNA appeared in this setting DNA strands will congregate near the interface of gas and water. IT did, which means that IF naturally appearing DNA was in this setting with the correct enzyme then may be a miracle would occur and life would appear. But all we see is lab supplied DNA and enzyme. The wole field is a cesspool of lost grant money supplied by our tax money.

https://aeon.co/essays/is-life-a-complex-computational-process?utm_source=Aeon+Newslett...

"Life is starting to look a lot less like an outcome of chemistry and physics, and more like a computational process

***

"Today, ‘adaptive function’ is the primary criterion for identifying the right kinds of biotic chemistry that give rise to life, as the theoretical biologist Michael Lachmann ... likes to point out. In the sciences, adaptive function refers to an organism’s capacity to biologically change, evolve or, put another way, solve problems.

***

"...genetic evolution also involves problem-solving. Insect wings solve the ‘problem’ of flight. Optical lenses that focus light solve the ‘problem’ of vision. And the kidneys solve the ‘problem’ of filtering blood. This kind of biological problem-solving – an outcome of natural selection and genetic drift – is conventionally called ‘adaptation’. Though it is crucial to the evolution of life, new research suggests it may also be crucial to the origins of life.

"This problem-solving perspective is radically altering our knowledge of the Universe. Life is starting to look a lot less like an outcome of chemistry and physics, and more like a computational process.

***

"Both computation and life involve a minimal set of algorithms that support adaptive function. These ‘algorithms’ help materials process information ... And so, as some research suggests, a search for life and a search for computation may not be so different. In both cases, we can be side-tracked if we focus on materials, on chemistry, physical environments and conditions.

***

"What drives these ideas, developed over the past 60 years by researchers working in disparate disciplines – including physics, computer science, astrobiology, synthetic biology, evolutionary science, neuroscience and philosophy – is a search for the fundamental principles that drive problem-solving matter.

***

"In 2013, the physicist David Deutsch published a paper on what he called ‘constructor theory’. This theory proposed a new way of approaching physics in which computation was foundational to the Universe, at a deeper level than the laws of quantum physics or general relativity.

***

"Constructor theory, and other similar ideas, may be necessary for understanding the deeper origins of life, which conventional physics and chemistry have failed to adequately explain.

***

"In fact, all successful efforts to date in synthetic biology derive from augmentation, not creation. (my bold)

***

"These ideas suggest that the emergence of complex computational systems (ie, life) in the Universe may be governed by deeper principles than we previously assumed. Organisms may have a more general objective than adaptation. What if life-forms arise not from a series of adaptive accidents, such as mutation and selection, but by attempting to solve a problem? ... So, what is this shared problem? The Maupertuis hypothesis suggests that, building on the second law of thermodynamics, life might be the Universe’s way of reaching thermodynamic equilibrium more quickly. It might be how the Universe ‘solves’ the problem of processing energy more effectively.

***

"For example, evolution by natural selection is a process in which repeated rounds of survival cause dominant genotypes to encode more and more information about their environment. ... a population of evolving organisms behaves like a sampling process, with each generation selecting from the possible range of genetic variants. Over many generations, the population can update its collective ‘knowledge’ of the world through repeated rounds of differential survival (or ‘natural selection’). (my bold)

***

"According to the information theory of individuality, individuals can be built from different chemical foundations. What matters is that life is defined by adaptive information.
(my bold)

***

"Is life problem-solving matter? When thinking about our biotic origins, it is important to remember that most chemical reactions are not connected to life, whether they take place here or elsewhere in the Universe. Chemistry alone is not enough to identify life. Instead, researchers use adaptive function – a capacity for solving problems – as the primary evidence and filter for identifying the right kinds of biotic chemistry.

***

"...the physics and chemistry that gave rise to life appear to have been doing more than simply obeying the fundamental laws. At some point in the Universe’s history, matter became purposeful. It became organised in a way that allowed it to adapt to its immediate environment.

***

"For living organisms, however, the rules of life can be modified or ‘programmed’ to solve unique biological problems ... This shift from one to the other marks the moment when matter became defined by computation and problem-solving. Certainly, specialised chemistry was required for this transition, but the fundamental revolution was not in matter but in logic."

Comment: I view this as the anything but God/mind approach. Obviously a designing mind is necessary to explain life's origin. Note my bolds showing the need for information handling. Life builds a library of necessary information which it uses.

https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/self-assembling-rna-strands-tamed-the-chemical-chao...

"New research shows how complex molecules that were key to kickstarting life on the early Earth could have survived, despite their inherent instability. The findings suggest that self-assembly processes could have boosted RNA sequences’ resistance to hydrolysis, helping to ‘tame the chemical chaos’ in prebiotic mixtures.

***

"Before modern cells existed, and DNA and proteins controlled life and metabolism, ‘RNA molecules had to do it all, without any blueprints’ says Kate Adamala, an expert in origins of life and semi-synthetic cells at the University of Minnesota, US. Back then, RNA sequences were responsible of storing information and coding for the instructions to make the first ever enzymes. But RNA is unstable. Without the protection provided by a biological cell, RNA strands should spontaneously decompose, as hydrolysis always favours the formation of monomers.

***

"The researchers created pools of nucleic acid monomers and molecules with different sequences, which are known as combinatorial libraries. To these, they added both chemical fuels – high energy molecules that favour oligomerisation – and DNA templates. The latter led to hybridisation, with complementary strands of nucleobases sticking together and forming stable double-stranded structures. ‘This interaction is very important to stabilise labile molecules, such as RNA strands,’ says Boekhoven. (my bold)

'Usually, synthetic sequences of RNA only survive hydrolysis for a few minutes. ‘However, when hybridised with a complementary strand, they remained stable for hours,’ he adds. ‘It’s a powerful model for understanding how the first RNA strands were formed, stabilised, selected, and replicated, [and] demonstrating how a pool of molecules can open-endedly evolve towards a minimal form of artificial life.’

"According to Adamala, the self-assembly of the earliest biopolymers could have benefited protocells. The stable RNA sequences that arise from the libraries could encode information for important metabolic reactions and ‘provide positive feedback to jumpstart natural selection and heredity’, she adds.

***

‘'Our findings [also] imply that nucleic acids affect the properties of protocells, which could result in an evolutionary advantage,’ says Boekhoven. Nevertheless, the results still miss a key step – replication. ‘It is the heart of living, self-sustaining systems,’ he explains. ‘But the mechanisms of selective stabilisation [could have] tamed the chemical chaos in prebiotic mixtures, [promoting the] copying and coding of sequences … and laying the foundation for the emergence of life.'’

Comment: this is actually laughable. How do all these critical chemicals naturally congregate in one special place? Intelligent design in the lab.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-024-02474-w

"Our results indicate that the LUCA existed between 4.09 and 4.33 billion years ago, a few hundred million years after the moon-forming impact. Our reconstruction of the genome of the LUCA is over 2.5 megabases, comparable to living bacteria, and encompasses at least 2,500 protein-coding genes. The LUCA was capable of nucleotide and protein synthesis, possessed a cellular envelope, and used ATP as an energy currency. … We also found that the LUCA possessed an RNA-based immune system … LUCA must have been part of a broader ecosystem, of which it represents the only living descendant. (my bold)

"Although some aspects of our study are in good agreement with previous work on the LUCA, we infer a larger genome size and genetic repertoire than most previous studies."

From a Washington Post article:

https://archive.is/FyGo8#selection-529.0-532.0

"Although Earth was formed nearly 4.6 billion years ago, scientists think our planet wasn’t cool enough for habitable environments until about 4.3 to 4.4 billion years ago, said Goldman. If LUCA was indeed around 4.2 billion years ago, as the study suggests, this dating would rewrite our understanding of how fast life can emerge under the right conditions.

“That is a lot of evolution to happen within 100 million years or less,” Goldman said. (my bold)

***

"The new timeline and details can be chalked up to more advanced analysis methods available today. In the new study, the team of 19 scientists used a combination of genetic analysis and fossil records to determine the age of LUCA and its characteristics. They first compared genes in modern genomes of bacteria and archaea to determine which gene families were present in LUCA. They estimated LUCA’s genome size, the number of proteins it encoded and its metabolism.

“'The computational model is kind of working its way backwards to say that these things are slightly different and, based on our model of molecular evolution, they probably share a common ancestor,” Moody said. “You work all the way back and eventually you’re going to get a common ancestor of everything, which is LUCA.'”

"The team separately performed an analysis using a much smaller number of genes that they thought duplicated before LUCA, which they calibrated with fossils to get its age.
Moody said the research is probably the “most ambitious” attempt to characterize and date LUCA.

***

"...new research released Monday suggested that organisms around that time could have received the necessary ingredients for life through lightning hitting the ground. Mimicking cloud-to-ground lightning in a lab experiment, scientists found that carbon and nitrogen in the air were converted into biologically useful molecules in high enough concentrations to spark or sustain life on Earth at that time.

"Haihui Joy Jiang, lead author of Monday’s study and a researcher at Harvard University, didn’t comment if her study supported this new LUCA theory but said this energy source could have been in play more than 4 billion years ago. That date matches up with the revised age of LUCA."

Comment: early life all based on theoretical estimates. An immune system of course implies an ecosystem that it lived in and reacted in. The comment: "That is a lot of evolution to happen within 100 million years or less" is a highlight of the suggestion there must be a designer. Life requires a complex entity to achieve actual living. Such sudden appearance of life begs for a designer.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/08/240802132849.htm

"The origins of life remain a major mystery. How were complex molecules able to form and remain intact for prolonged periods without disintegrating?

***

"In all likelihood, life on Earth began in water, perhaps in a tide pool that was cut off from seawater at low tide but flooded by waves at high tide. Over billions of years, complex molecules like DNA, RNA and proteins formed in this setting before, ultimately, the first cells emerged. To date, however, nobody has been able to explain exactly how this happened.

***

"'RNA is a fascinating molecule," says Boekhoven. "It can store information and also catalyze biochemical reactions." Scientists therefore believe that RNA must have been the first of all complex molecules to form.

"The problem, however, is that active RNA molecules are composed of hundreds or even thousands of bases and are very unstable. When immersed in water, RNA strands quickly break down into their constituent parts -- a process known as hydrolysis. So, how could RNA have survived in the primordial soup? (my bold)

"In laboratory testing, the researchers from TUM and LMU used a model system of RNA bases that join together more easily than naturally occurring bases in our cells today. "We didn't have millions of years available and wanted an answer quickly," explains Boekhoven. The team added these fast-joining RNA bases into a watery solution, provided an energy source and examined the length of the RNA molecules that formed. Their findings were sobering, as the resulting strands of up to five base pairs only survived for a matter of minutes. (my bold)

"The results were different, however, when the researchers started by adding short strands of pre-formed RNA. The free complementary bases quickly joined with this RNA in a process called hybridization. Double strands of three to five base pairs in length formed and remained stable for several hours. "The exciting part is that double strands lead to RNA folding, which can make the RNA catalytically active," explains Boekhoven. Double-stranded RNA therefore has two advantages: it has an extended lifespan in the primordial soup and serves as the basis for catalytically active RNA.

"But how could a double strand have formed in the primordial soup? "We're currently exploring whether it's possible for RNAs to form their own complementary strand," says Boekhoven. It is conceivable for a molecule comprising three bases to join with a molecule comprising three complementary bases -- the product of which would be a stable double-strand. Thanks to its prolonged lifespan, further bases could join with it and the strand would grow. (my bold)

"Another characteristic of double-stranded RNA could have helped bring about the origin of life. It is firstly important to note that RNA molecules can also form protocells. These are tiny droplets with an interior fully separated from the outside world. Yet, these protocells do not have a stable cell membrane and so easily merge with other protocells, which causes their contents to mix. This is not conducive to evolution because it prevents individual protocells from developing a unique identity. However, if the borders of these protocells are composed of double-stranded DNA, the cells become more stable and merging is inhibited."

Comment: Same old, same old. All of this work starts with preformed molecules off the shelf. It thus completely bypasses the ultimate question how did any biochemical molecules form on a hot rocky planet?

https://www.sciencealert.com/complex-life-on-earth-may-be-1-5-billion-years-older-than-...

"An unusually substantial number of fossils large enough to be seen without a microscope have been discovered in the Franceville Basin, and it's not clear what we're to make of them. Earlier studies have also suggested these macrofossils point to the first complex life on the planet.

"Here, the researchers link the nutrient enrichment of the water to the collision of two ancient continents, which then created a shallow inland sea and the conditions for cyanobacterial photosynthesis, a chemical process that would've led to an underwater environment more conducive to biological complexity.

"This would have created a natural laboratory for organism diversity and evolutionary leaps in size and structure, the researchers contend. However, because the body of water was isolated, these more sophisticated forms of life wouldn't have spread elsewhere or survived to the next jump forward.

***

"These findings may point to complex life on Earth evolving in two steps: once following the first major atmospheric oxygen rise 2.1 billion years ago, and again following a second rise 1.5 billion years later.

"In fact, complex life might have arisen several times over the millennia, as has been suggested by other studies. Scientists are still working to pin down which types of life evolved when, and there's no guarantee that all evolutionary jumps would've stuck.

"Delving this far back into the past isn't easy, of course; it involves some careful analysis of ancient fossils and environments that may have harbored conditions suitable for what these researchers describe as "macrobiological experimentation'".

Comment: Earliest life is still 3.5 billon years ago in stromatolites. But more complex life led into the Ediacaran period with these newer fossils connecting the time frame.