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The origin of life on Earth, explained

The origin of life on Earth stands as one of the great mysteries of science. Various answers have been proposed, all of which remain unverified. To find out if we are alone in the galaxy, we will need to better understand what geochemical conditions nurtured the first life forms. What water, chemistry and temperature cycles fostered the chemical reactions that allowed life to emerge on our planet? Because life arose in the largely unknown surface conditions of Earth’s early history, answering these and other questions remains a challenge.

Several seminal experiments in this topic have been conducted at the University of Chicago, including the Miller-Urey experiment that suggested how the building blocks of life could form in a primordial soup.

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When did life on Earth begin?

Where did life on Earth begin?

What are the ingredients of life on earth, what are the major scientific theories for how life emerged, what is chirality and why is it biologically important, what research are uchicago scientists currently conducting on the origins of life, when did life on earth begin .

Earth is about 4.5 billion years old. Scientists think that by 4.3 billion years ago, Earth may have developed conditions suitable to support life. The oldest known fossils, however, are only 3.7 billion years old. During that 600 million-year window, life may have emerged repeatedly, only to be snuffed out by catastrophic collisions with asteroids and comets.

The details of those early events are not well preserved in Earth’s oldest rocks. Some hints come from the oldest zircons, highly durable minerals that formed in magma. Scientists have found traces of a form of carbon—an important element in living organisms— in one such 4.1 billion-year-old zircon . However, it does not provide enough evidence to prove life’s existence at that early date.

Two possibilities are in volcanically active hydrothermal environments on land and at sea.

Some microorganisms thrive in the scalding, highly acidic hot springs environments like those found today in Iceland, Norway and Yellowstone National Park. The same goes for deep-sea hydrothermal vents. These chimney-like vents form where seawater comes into contact with magma on the ocean floor, resulting in streams of superheated plumes. The microorganisms that live near such plumes have led some scientists to suggest them as the birthplaces of Earth’s first life forms.

Organic molecules may also have formed in certain types of clay minerals that could have offered favorable conditions for protection and preservation. This could have happened on Earth during its early history, or on comets and asteroids that later brought them to Earth in collisions. This would suggest that the same process could have seeded life on planets elsewhere in the universe.

The recipe consists of a steady energy source, organic compounds and water.

Sunlight provides the energy source at the surface, which drives photosynthesis. On the ocean floor, geothermal energy supplies the chemical nutrients that organisms need to live.

Also crucial are the elements important to life . For us, these are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and phosphorus. But there are several scientific mysteries about how these elements wound up together on Earth. For example, scientists would not expect a planet that formed so close to the sun to naturally incorporate carbon and nitrogen. These elements become solid only under very cold temperatures, such as exist in the outer solar system, not nearer to the sun where Earth is. Also, carbon, like gold, is rare at the Earth’s surface. That’s because carbon chemically bonds more often with iron than rock. Gold also bonds more often with metal, so most of it ends up in the Earth’s core. So, how did the small amounts found at the surface get there? Could a similar process also have unfolded on other planets?

The last ingredient is water. Water now covers about 70% of Earth’s surface, but how much sat on the surface 4 billion years ago? Like carbon and nitrogen, water is much more likely to become a part of solid objects that formed at a greater distance from the sun. To explain its presence on Earth, one theory proposes that a class of meteorites called carbonaceous chondrites formed far enough from the sun to have served as a water-delivery system.

There are several theories for how life came to be on Earth. These include:

Life emerged from a primordial soup

As a University of Chicago graduate student in 1952, Stanley Miller performed a famous experiment with Harold Urey, a Nobel laureate in chemistry. Their results explored the idea that life formed in a primordial soup.

Miller and Urey injected ammonia, methane and water vapor into an enclosed glass container to simulate what were then believed to be the conditions of Earth’s early atmosphere. Then they passed electrical sparks through the container to simulate lightning. Amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, soon formed. Miller and Urey realized that this process could have paved the way for the molecules needed to produce life.

Scientists now believe that Earth’s early atmosphere had a different chemical makeup from Miller and Urey’s recipe. Even so, the experiment gave rise to a new scientific field called prebiotic or abiotic chemistry, the chemistry that preceded the origin of life. This is the opposite of biogenesis, the idea that only a living organism can beget another living organism.

Seeded by comets or meteors

Some scientists think that some of the molecules important to life may be produced outside the Earth. Instead, they suggest that these ingredients came from meteorites or comets.

“A colleague once told me, ‘It’s a lot easier to build a house out of Legos when they’re falling from the sky,’” said Fred Ciesla, a geophysical sciences professor at UChicago. Ciesla and that colleague, Scott Sandford of the NASA Ames Research Center, published research showing that complex organic compounds were readily produced under conditions that likely prevailed in the early solar system when many meteorites formed.

Meteorites then might have served as the cosmic Mayflowers that transported molecular seeds to Earth. In 1969, the Murchison meteorite that fell in Australia contained dozens of different amino acids—the building blocks of life.

Comets may also have offered a ride to Earth-bound hitchhiking molecules, according to experimental results published in 2001 by a team of researchers from Argonne National Laboratory, the University of California Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. By showing that amino acids could survive a fiery comet collision with Earth, the team bolstered the idea that life’s raw materials came from space.

In 2019, a team of researchers in France and Italy reported finding extraterrestrial organic material preserved in the 3.3 billion-year-old sediments of Barberton, South Africa. The team suggested micrometeorites as the material’s likely source. Further such evidence came in 2022 from samples of asteroid Ryugu returned to Earth by Japan’s Hayabusa2 mission. The count of amino acids found in the Ryugu samples now exceeds 20 different types .

In 1953, UChicago researchers published a landmark paper in the Journal of Biological Chemistry that marked the discovery of the pro-chirality concept , which pervades modern chemistry and biology. The paper described an experiment showing that the chirality of molecules—or “handedness,” much the way the right and left hands differ from one another—drives all life processes. Without chirality, large biological molecules such as proteins would be unable to form structures that could be reproduced.

Today, research on the origin of life at UChicago is expanding. As scientists have been able to find more and more exoplanets—that is, planets around stars elsewhere in the galaxy—the question of what the essential ingredients for life are and how to look for signs of them has heated up.

Nobel laureate Jack Szostak joined the UChicago faculty as University Professor in Chemistry in 2022 and will lead the University’s new interdisciplinary Origins of Life Initiative to coordinate research efforts into the origin of life on Earth. Scientists from several departments of the Physical Sciences Division are joining the initiative, including specialists in chemistry, astronomy, geology and geophysics.

“Right now we are getting truly unprecedented amounts of data coming in: Missions like Hayabusa and OSIRIS-REx are bringing us pieces of asteroids, which helps us understand the conditions that form planets, and NASA’s new JWST telescope is taking astounding data on the solar system and the planets around us ,” said Prof. Ciesla. “I think we’re going to make huge progress on this question.”

Last updated Sept. 19, 2022.

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How did life on Earth begin? Cracks may have been the key.

In a groundbreaking experiment in the early 1950s, a scientist tried to re-create the conditions of early Earth in a test tube.

Stanley Miller added a few simple ingredients thought to be swirling in the young planet’s atmosphere and oceans to interconnected flasks, applied heat and zapped them with electricity to simulate lightning. The findings quickly became famous: Out of this primordial soup emerged amino acids, the chemical building blocks of life.

The discovery kick-started a quest within chemistry and biology to devise experiments that could help answer one of the biggest scientific questions facing humanity: How did life on Earth begin?

Now, scientists at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich have taken an exciting step forward by showing how more complex molecules crucial for life could have been synthesized from early Earth’s basic ingredients.

In their study, published in the journal Nature , the scientists swapped test tubes for tiny networks of branching cracks that resemble those that naturally form in rocks. They flowed water through the cracks, along with key chemical building blocks, then applied heat, mimicking a process akin to what might happen near hydrothermal vents in the ocean or in porous rocks near a geothermal pool.

They discovered that the heat flowing across these geologic networks sorted and filtered molecules, helping them create longer chains called biopolymers that are essential for life.

“It’s a fantastic demonstration that simple physical processes can work to do this stuff,” said Matthew Pasek, a geoscience professor at the University of South Florida who was not involved in the research.

A dilute primordial soup

Because the question of how life began is so big, it transcends the traditional boundaries that carve science into different disciplines. Chemists, biologists, astrophysicists and geologists all have a seat at the table when trying to answer the question.

Bridging those boundaries is what interested Christof Mast, a biophysicist at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, whose lab designed an experimental setup that would be somewhat closer to the conditions where the “prebiotic chemistry” that gave rise to life took place.

For decades, scientists have wrestled with the problem that early Earth wasn’t a pristine laboratory, with beakers, impeccably timed purification steps and concentrated stocks of ingredients. It’s one thing to re-create the chemistry of life in a lab , but experiments that are doable in a flask may be improbable at best under messy real-world conditions.

“You can think of the prebiotic Earth, this prebiotic soup, that is highly dilute, and all these different things react in a very uncontrolled way,” Mast said.

One of the problems to date is that chemical reactions in the lab often result in side products that can start their own unwanted reactions, leaving scientists with only tiny amounts of the key material. So how did early Earth brew up enough of these building blocks for life to eventually blaze into existence?

To try to figure that out, the researchers cut branching networks of interconnected cracks into a tiny piece of an inert Teflon-like substance called FEP and sandwiched it between two sapphire plates. The sapphires were brought to precise but different temperatures to create heat flux through the geologic network between them, mimicking the way that heat probably flowed on early Earth — perhaps near volcanoes or hydrothermal vents. Then, they flowed water and basic chemical building blocks through the crack network and observed what happened.

In one proof-of-concept experiment, they used glycine, the simplest amino acid, along with a substance called TMP that can react to link two glycine molecules.

Such reactions are difficult in water, Mast said, and TMP was very rare on early Earth. When they just mixed those ingredients together in a beaker, or in geologic cracks without heat, the amount of the more complex biopolymer they created was “vanishingly small,” the researchers reported.

But when they applied a heat gradient to the cracks, it massively increased the production of the biopolymer. That’s significant because while amino acids are important, they are still far from life. Those same basic building blocks have been found on lifeless meteorites , for example.

“In order to get things the next level up, you have to start making the polymers — that’s a fundamental step in making the next realm of life,” Pasek said.

Don’t forget about the pot

The setup can’t weigh in on the ultimate question about how life began: Was it in a pond, as might have existed on Earth’s surface, or near a hydrothermal vent akin to the ones found deep in the ocean? Heat flux across rock could occur in a multitude of geologic settings, Mast said, and were probably “ubiquitous” on early Earth.

But the experimental setup can be used to test other questions about early chemistry on the planet. Mast is hoping to next create a network of cracks out of geologic materials, and to build larger networks of connected chambers.

The study is yet another reminder that elegant chemistry experiments can ignore a fundamental part of the primordial soup: the pot.

In 2021, a team of scientists found that in the famous 1950s experiment, the test tube itself — or rather, the borosilicate glass that it was made of — played a role in the results.

When those scientists repeated the experiment in a glass flask, a Teflon flask, and then in a Teflon flask with a bit of borosilicate glass, they found that the glass was a critical ingredient in catalyzing the reactions.

“In other words, for cooking the ‘primordial soup,’ the casserole is important,” Juan Manuel García-Ruiz, a research professor at the Donostia International Physics Center in Spain who was involved in the experiment , wrote in an email. He praised the new work for its imaginative approach and, perhaps most importantly, for being “geologically plausible.”

“It may not be the only mechanism, but it works and is ingenious, and above all, it is an experimental demonstration,” García-Ruiz said. “I think that we need more experimental approaches to explore the geochemical context of the planet when life was born.”

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The Harvard Origins of Life Initiative is comprised of researchers from many diverse scientific disciplines joined by a fascination with the big questions in origins of life science. Faculty members share their work with their colleagues in other disciplines and departments, seeking deeper connections through an understanding of the work of others. Postdoctoral fellows make the most of our faculty’s access to state of the art experimental and observational facilities. Within this collaboration, summer undergraduate students and graduate students tackle complex origins problems in the labs of senior researchers.

The work requires the combined effort of most science at Harvard. Currently our team represents the following physical and life sciences:

Our researchers break down boundaries to address these fundamental questions:

What is the range of possible planetary environments?
What chemical processes shaped the composition of asteroids and comets?
How did the impact history of the early Earth affect the origin of life?
What were the geochemical and geophysical contexts of prebiotic synthesis?
What prebiotic chemistry was responsible for the synthesis of the building blocks of biology from simple starting materials?
What principles or methods can help us to understand the chemistry of realistically complex mixtures of reactants?
Can the fast and accurate non-enzymatic and/or RNA-catalyzed replication of RNA be demonstrated experimentally?
How did primitive protocells assemble and replicate?
How did prebiotic synthetic processes morph into genetically encoded metabolic pathways?
What is the earliest record of microbial life?
Planetary Context in the Origin of Life
Research Spotlight: Andy Knoll
Research Spotlight: Jack Szostak
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Rethinking the Search for the Origins of Life

Earth Under an Active Young Sun

Solar evolution models constrain the total power output, or luminosity, of the early Sun, just after the birth of our solar system, to roughly 70% of its current level. Even so, investigations of young solar analogues found among other stars indicate that the Sun’s ultraviolet (UV) output may have been elevated compared with modern levels. Not only do these analogues exhibit elevated high-energy emissions, but also they have more frequent coronal mass ejection events [ Airapetian et al. , 2020].

If our young Sun exhibited elevated ultraviolet (UV) output, fluxes of UV light at Earth’s surface would have been greater, likely influencing the synthesis, degradation, and transformation of prebiotic compounds.

If our young Sun exhibited such activity, carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), methane (CH 4 ), water, and nitrogen-bearing species like molecular nitrogen (N 2 ) in the early atmosphere would have photodissociated (broken apart because of interaction with light) at higher rates than we see today. Fluxes of UV light at Earth’s surface also would have been greater, likely influencing the synthesis, degradation, and transformation of prebiotic compounds. Further, robust photodissociation of these molecules would have contributed key components that may have helped jump-start primitive chemosynthetic metabolisms, including those that used carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxide (NO x ) compounds [e.g., Kasting , 2014]. Accurate models of early solar spectra, developed by computational methods or through observational studies of early Sun analogues, are a key input required for photochemical models of early Earth atmospheres.

Earth’s Early Atmosphere and Ocean

Volatile emissions from the solid Earth contributed massively to the composition of the planet’s early atmosphere. The influence of other factors, like frequent and often large impactors (e.g., meteorites and planetesimals), is still debated. Chemical interactions caused by impactors striking Earth may have produced reduced gases like CH 4 and molecular hydrogen [ Zahnle et al. , 2020] (Figure 1), whereas early volcanism likely produced relatively oxidized gases like CO 2 and N 2 (Figure 2).

Illustration of a potential early Earth environment showing an orange sky (with a meteorite streaking through it) and a water-filled impact crater.

The distributions of these gases over time and space in the atmosphere would have dictated the availability of chemical reactants essential to prebiotic chemistry. They also would have modulated surface temperature and habitability under the presumably subdued solar input and at times of high UV fluxes during massive solar ejections. The presence and strength of the geomagnetic field—also the subject of intense study and debate—would have further regulated the retention or loss to space of atmospheric gases.

Illustration of a potential early Earth environment showing a blue sky, a volcanic ash cloud, a blue lake, and hot springs with green water.

Geochemical data from the oldest zircons suggest that early recycling of crustal materials that had been previously altered in the presence of liquid water occurred during the Hadean eon (i.e., from the birth of the planet to about 4 billion years ago). This observation provides evidence for hydrologic cycling; relatively cool surface temperatures; early crustal differentiation to form silica-rich rocks; and even incipient plate boundary interactions, possibly including subduction, during this period [ Harrison , 2020]. Arguments for the presence of very early oceans in the Hadean—a time formerly thought to have been too hot for liquid water to exist on Earth’s surface—have shifted the conversation about Earth’s earliest environments toward a consensus that they may have been favorable for life’s emergence.

Despite progress in our understanding, the composition of Hadean oceans and their evolution through the first several hundred million years of Earth’s history—and even whether liquid water was continuously and pervasively present—remain largely unknown. Oxidized compounds that we see in the modern ocean, like sulfates, would have likely been absent in Hadean oceans, which instead were probably acidic and rich in reduced iron as a result of the CO 2 -rich, oxygen-poor atmosphere [ Halevy and Bachan , 2017] (Figure 3). Bulk Hadean ocean chemistry, water-rock interactions, and hydrothermal processing would have determined the properties of all near-surface and deep marine fluids while helping to modulate climate and set conditions in which prebiotic reactions could occur.

Plates and Planetesimals

Another important question is when crust emerged above the ocean surface. Some tectonic models indicate that conditions favorable to the formation of nascent, emerged continents might have occurred in the Hadean. Hot spot volcanism and large impacts also may have generated topographically high places that rose above the waves (see the opening image).

In addition to influencing the emergence of land, tectonic processes would have affected ocean and atmosphere composition, Earth’s climate, and diverse hydrothermal landscapes that may have shaped prebiotic chemistry (Figure 3). For example, weathering of primitive crust would have drawn down levels of atmospheric CO 2 , dampening the global greenhouse effect and altering ocean chemistry. And the rate of weathering would have accelerated, as more subaerial land was exposed.

Illustration of a hypothetical mid-ocean ridge spreading center on the early ocean floor, with hydrothermal vents and different color particles precipitating to the seafloor.

Exposed (subaerial) landmasses also could have been crucial to the evolution of prebiotic chemistry [e.g., Benner et al. , 2020]. Land exposed to the atmosphere experiences wet-dry cycles, and evaporation concentrates chemical compounds (Figure 2). These processes could have driven the assembly of cellular building blocks, such as lipid-like compounds that form enclosed vesicles, with the potential to encapsulate the precursors of genetic information and metabolic networks. Similar processes also might have supported transitions of these precursors into self-sustaining functional systems [ Damer and Deamer , 2020]. However, although subaerial land is central in some views of the prebiotic world, the likelihood of such landmasses during the Hadean remains an open question.

The full range of consequences from early impacts, both conducive to and challenging for the beginnings of life, remain an important topic of research.

As early Earth’s skies, ocean, and crust were evolving, the planet was being bombarded by large meteorites and planetesimals (Figure 1). Early collisions likely destroyed near-surface environments [ Sleep et al. , 1989], but also they may have delivered key prebiotic compounds to the planet, such as amino acids, sugars, purines (nitrogen-containing organic compounds that form the building blocks of modern DNA and RNA), and reactive phosphorus [e.g., Furukawa et al. , 2019]. These collisions are also credited with creating a transient, highly reducing atmosphere , in contrast to the highly oxidizing conditions we have today [ Benner et al. , 2020; Zahnle et al. , 2020]. Most models of prebiotic chemistry suggest reducing conditions as the most probable path to generating essential prebiotic compounds.

Beyond the delivery and production of essential organic molecules through impacts, such events may have helped fuel life’s beginnings in other ways, specifically by stimulating hydrothermal activity (Figure 1). The full range of consequences from early impacts, both conducive to and challenging for the beginnings of life, remain an important topic of research.

Filling In the Blanks Together

Studies and hypotheses related to the origins of life are fraught with uncertainties and debate, which is not surprising considering that scientists are looking back more than 4 billion years to piece together highly complex processes. The uncertainties, consequences, and interrelationships linked to these processes must be explored further.

None of the processes or hypotheses discussed here can be illuminated convincingly in isolation. To date, the diverse research communities separately investigating life’s origins and Earth’s early environments, who typically have collaborated and interacted across disciplines only superficially, have not achieved landmark progress toward resolving very difficult questions. The new Prebiotic Chemistry and Early Earth Environments ( PCE 3 ) Research Coordination Network (RCN) within NASA’s Astrobiology Program was designed to bridge this gap. This consortium of researchers aims to transform origins-of-life research by enhancing communication across the disciplinary divide between early Earth geoscientists and prebiotic chemists.

In this new collaborative scheme, possible prebiotic chemical scenarios can be filtered by minimizing assumptions and by environmental plausibility.

The principal goal of PCE 3 is to cultivate a new research culture in which potential prebiotic pathways to life are tested within realistic planetary conditions and the dynamics and constraints of early Earth environments are fully integrated into origins hypotheses. We envision an iterative process wherein the needs and uncertainties of one group help motivate the research trajectories of the other in an ongoing back-and-forth.

For example, in efforts to chemically synthesize informational polymers, the products of such experiments often define next steps for research with little or no consideration for whether the conditions that yielded a successful reaction (e.g., salinity, pH, oxidation state, dissolved aqueous species) were likely to have existed in early Earth environments. Considering how much has been learned about Hadean conditions, geoscientific knowledge can and should inform next steps and goals in this work. In this new collaborative scheme, possible prebiotic chemical scenarios can be filtered by minimizing assumptions and by environmental plausibility.

New Discussions and Directions

Members of the PCE 3 consortium are part of a growing community that includes many early-career scientists, poised to better integrate environmental knowledge of early Earth with models of life’s prebiotic chemistry. An important step toward this community building and integration was a PCE 3 -sponsored workshop in fall 2020 that hosted scientists from diverse disciplines. Themes covered in the workshop included Earth’s planetary formation; interactions between the crust and the volatile reservoir; the nature, sources, and inventories of life’s building blocks; the geologic settings where they occurred on early Earth; the reaction pathways that could result in increasingly complex prebiotic molecules; and ways of tracing our ancestors’ origins through investigations of present-day biochemistry.

Workshop participants compiled the most important open questions from each theme by identifying critical unknowns in studies of early Earth environments and their relationships to prebiotic chemistry. Topics of particular interest included the chemical and physical necessities shared among prebiotic chemical models and experiments and the prebiotic chemistry scenarios that likely lie outside planetary reality. For example, workshop participants highlighted as “critical unknowns” several aspects of the dynamic nature of local environments. These aspects include wet-dry cycles, temperature-pressure gradients, freeze-thaw cycles, atmospheric production rates of key molecules, redox fluctuations, and volcanic outgassing. Participants also identified mineral surface chemistries and the identity and concentration of metal ions in solution as important unknowns; these variables likely affected the types, rates, and the range of complexities of prebiotic reactions in local environments.

The uncertainties that have emerged in origins-of-life research can serve as nuclei for building a community engaged in interdisciplinary Earth science research.

We are confident that the interdisciplinary approach stressed at the workshop will be an effective model going forward. We anticipate planning more workshops and working groups and look forward to novel opportunities for multidisciplinary funding, communication and collaboration across communities, and continuous evaluation of the assumptions in long-standing models.

Despite dramatic strides in studies of Earth’s history and its coevolving biosphere, life’s beginnings remain unknown. The uncertainties that have emerged in origins-of-life research can serve as nuclei for building a community engaged in interdisciplinary Earth science research. The PCE 3 RCN is one important step toward a cohesive expression of shared needs, critical unknowns, and the unifying threads among different views of life’s beginnings.

It is essential that experiments in prebiotic chemistry account for what we already know about early Earth at global and local scales and that we translate progress made in our understanding of the Hadean into refined boundary conditions for these experiments. At the same time, scientists must question assumptions and continue to reexamine unknowns about early Earth—such as those discussed in this article—and integrate these uncertainties into their experiments and models.

How life began is an integral question central to the human experience, and it is intrinsically linked to the even bigger question of whether we are alone in the universe. The importance of focusing on early Earth is amplified as we expand our exploration of planetary habitability and life on other planets and moons, as well as planetary systems beyond our solar system. Identifying the specific conditions and chemical pathways that fostered the emergence of life is certain to factor prominently in that search.

Acknowledgments

We are indebted to Janet Iwasa for helping to draft the illustrations. We thank Simone Marchi, Miki Nakajima, Eddie Schwieterman, and Nick Tosca for their insight and scientific expertise, especially as we worked on the overview image. Funding for this project was provided by Earth’s First Origins NASA grant 80NSSC19M0069.

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Bell, E. A., et al. (2015), Potentially biogenic carbon preserved in a 4.1 billion-year-old zircon, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. , 112 , 14,518–14,521, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1517557112 .

Benner, S. A., et al. (2020), When did life likely emerge on Earth in an RNA-first process?, ChemSystemsChem, 2 , e1900035, https://doi.org/10.1002/syst.202000010 .

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Furukawa, Y., et al. (2019), Extraterrestrial ribose and other sugars in primitive meteorites, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. , 116 , 24,440–24,445, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1907169116 .

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Author Information

Dustin Trail ( [email protected] ), University of Rochester, Rochester, N.Y.; Jamie Elsila, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.; Ulrich F. Müller, University of California, San Diego; Timothy Lyons, University of California, Riverside; and Karyn L. Rogers, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, N.Y.

Citation: Trail, D., J. Elsila, U. F. Müller, T. Lyons, and K. L. Rogers (2022), Rethinking the search for the origins of life, Eos, 103, https://doi.org/10.1029/2022EO220065 . Published on 4 February 2022.

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The Future of Origin of Life Research: Bridging Decades-Old Divisions

Affiliations.

1 Institute of Molecular Evolution, University of Düsseldorf, 40225 Düsseldorf, Germany.
2 School of Chemistry, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G128QQ, UK.
3 Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, Lensfield Road, Cambridge CB2 1EW, UK.
4 School of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1RL, UK.
5 Environmental Microbial Genomics, Laboratoire Ampère, Ecole Centrale de Lyon, Université de Lyon, 69130 Ecully, France.
6 Origins Center, Department of Earth Sciences, Utrecht University, 3584 CB Utrecht, The Netherlands.
7 Space Science Center (ANGKASA), Institute of Climate Change, Level 3, Research Complex, National University of Malaysia, 43600, UKM Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia.
8 Department of Physical Chemistry, University of Chemistry and Technology, Prague, Technicka 5, 16628 Prague 6-Dejvice, Czech Republic.
9 UK Centre for Astrobiology, School of Chemistry, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3FJ, UK.
10 Institut für Geologische Wissenschaften, Freie Universität Berlin, 12249 Berlin, Germany.
11 Lycée Colbert, BP 50620 59208 Tourcoing Cedex, France.
12 Institute of Synthetic Microbiology, University of Düsseldorf, 40225 Düsseldorf, Germany.
13 Quantitative and Theoretical Biology, University of Düsseldorf, 40225 Düsseldorf, Germany.
14 School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, London E1 4DQ, UK.
15 Université de Strasbourg, CNRS, ISIS, 8 allée Gaspard Monge, 67000 Strasbourg, France.
16 Archaea Biology and Ecogenomics Division, University of Vienna, 1090 Vienna, Austria.
17 Cellular and Molecular Biophysics, Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, 82152 Martinsried, Germany.
18 Department of Plant Systematics, Ecology and Theoretical Biology, Eötvös Loránd University, Pázmány Péter sétány 1/C, 1117 Budapest, Hungary.
19 Institute of Evolution, MTA Centre for Ecological Research, Klebelsberg Kuno u. 3., H-8237 Tihany, Hungary.
20 Department of Cellular, Computational and Integrative Biology (CIBIO), University of Trento, 38123 Trento, Italy.
21 Systems Biophysics, Physics Department, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, 80799 Munich, Germany.
22 Cluster of Excellence on Plant Sciences (CEPLAS), University of Cologne, 50674 Cologne, Germany.
PMID: 32110893
PMCID: PMC7151616
DOI: 10.3390/life10030020

Research on the origin of life is highly heterogeneous. After a peculiar historical development, it still includes strongly opposed views which potentially hinder progress. In the 1st Interdisciplinary Origin of Life Meeting, early-career researchers gathered to explore the commonalities between theories and approaches, critical divergence points, and expectations for the future. We find that even though classical approaches and theories-e.g. bottom-up and top-down, RNA world vs. metabolism-first-have been prevalent in origin of life research, they are ceasing to be mutually exclusive and they can and should feed integrating approaches. Here we focus on pressing questions and recent developments that bridge the classical disciplines and approaches, and highlight expectations for future endeavours in origin of life research.

Keywords: LUCA; abiogenesis; bottom-up; early life; emergence; origins of life; prebiotic chemistry; top-down.

Grants and funding

MA-1426/21-1/Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
666053/ERC_/European Research Council/International
93046/Volkswagen Foundation
C.Z. 02.2.69/0.0/0.0/16_027/0008351/European Structural and Investment Funds Operational Programme
GGP-2019-029/Research Encouragement Fund UKM
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Life’s Beginnings

Studying how life bloomed on earth—and might emerge elsewhere..

September-October 2013

Dimitar Sasselov, director of the Origins of Life Initiative, searches for planets around red dwarf stars. Because they are dimmer and smaller than our sun, red dwarfs make ideal targets for taking images of the extrasolar planets that orbit them.

Are the inhabitants of Earth the only life forms in the universe, or could life exist elsewhere? As astronomers rapidly identify exoplanets—those beyond our solar system—the question has been transformed from a science-fiction trope to one discussed in scientific journals and conferences.

And it quickly leads to another question: How did life start here on Earth? That question, says Dimitar Sasselov , professor of astronomy and director of the Origins of Life Initiative at Harvard, “is one of the big unsolved questions humanity has always asked.” And yet for various reasons it has been difficult to answer. Biology has been very good at describing how living organisms work; it has been far less successful at answering what life is and how it could emerge from a non-living world.

“If you think of the two deepest and most challenging questions we could ask about life, I think they’re ‘How did it begin, and are we alone in the universe?’ ” says Andrew Knoll , Fisher professor of natural history. “And what I find remarkable when I think about it is that we are really the first generation in human history to ask those as scientific rather than philosophical questions.”

The initiative, launched with seed money from the University in 2005, has brought together scientists from largely disconnected fields—astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, earth and planetary sciences—to tackle these issues. Sasselov says such breadth of expertise is necessary because so many conditions influence life’s emergence. How did the Earth aggregate from cosmic elements in such a way that it could support life? What environmental conditions does life require? How do inorganic molecules begin to behave like living organisms: replicating, organizing into cells, growing, evolving? (Read the sidebar, “Emergence of a Field.” )

“In a certain sense our main question is really: what is the nature of life?” Sasselov explains. “That’s why we call it the Origins of Life Initiative. The plural here is very intentional.” If the only goal is to understand life on Earth, he says, it’s a historical question. But if the goal is to understand how life emerges from particular environmental and chemical conditions, then the answer is much more fundamental. It raises the possibility that life could form in different ways on different planets. And ultimately, Sasselov believes, it could help us move beyond simply describing life to uncovering universal principles that govern it, akin to principles of planetary motion.

Discovering other worlds

The first exoplanets discovered were hulking, puffy, Jupiter-like planets that would not be able to support life as we know it. While all exoplanets are interesting in their own right, to anyone looking for life outside Earth, the true prize is small planets that are dense and rocky like our own, and that exist in the so-called “habitable zone,” where surface temperatures are consistent with liquid water, a requirement for familiar life forms. Scientists are making rapid progress in hunting this smaller prey; in fact, they now estimate that small planets far outnumber large ones.

The challenge, of course, is not just to identify planets but to know something about them and whether they could support life. One of the initiative’s most significant accomplishments to date is the development of a new resource, the HARPS (High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher) North instrument, which is designed to detect and characterize exoplanets similar to Earth in mass and structure. NASA’s Kepler space telescope has detected thousands of potential candidate planets, but determining their mass, mean density, and composition requires a more precise instrument. HARPS is a spectrograph that can measure subtle wobbles in the stars the planets orbit, caused by the gravitational tugs the planets exert. The first HARPS instrument is located at the European Southern Observatory telescope at La Silla, Chile. The newer HARPS-N—created through an international partnership that included the Origins of Life Initiative, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and Harvard College Observatory, the University of Geneva, and other institutions—has been installed on the TNG (Telescopio Nazionale Galileo), a 3.6-meter telescope at the Roque de Los Muchachos observatory in the Canary Islands. This telescope is trained on the same skies as Kepler, which makes HARPS North a powerful partner in characterizing planets.

David Charbonneau , professor of astronomy, says that after making first observations with the instrument last spring, the research team is now in the process of gathering and analyzing data, which takes time because of the slow cycles of planets around their stars. He says the instrument’s precision makes it possible to begin studying the planets’ atmospheric content. “The light from the star passes through the planet’s atmosphere on the way to telescope,” he explains, and the atmosphere’s signature on that spectrum of light can be measured. Charbonneau’s next task is to design experiments that can do just that: find signatures of molecules like oxygen within these spectra.

In the longer term, the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), now under development in Chile’s Atacama Desert, will also be paired with a sensitive spectrograph, dubbed G-CLEF (GMT Consortium Large Earth Finder), to enable more direct observations of distant stars and their planets (see “Seeing Stars,” May-June, page 32). “I can guarantee you that, 10 years from now, we will have spectra that will be extremely exciting and interesting,” says Sasselov. Astronomers will join with colleagues in chemistry and biology to interpret those data, enabling scientists to know, for instance, if a planet has lots of oxygen or methane or carbon dioxide, or whether it has other molecules not abundant on the Earth. “That’s the moment to which we are building,” he says.

The first characterizations, he adds, will almost certainly be of planets that are not inhabited, “but they will teach us about some of the basics of geochemistry, and what the variety of different environmental conditions are beyond what’s available in the solar system.” That in itself might stimulate new ways of thinking about how life arises.

The conditions for life, on Earth and elsewhere

With technologies available soon that may enable scientists to identify the conditions conducive to life on other planets, the question of which planets to study becomes critical. Despite their best speculations, scientists have only one model to work from: Earth.

But Earth’s surface is constantly turning over and weathering down, so any signs of sedimentary deposits from the planet prior to the appearance of life have been subsumed through plate tectonics or eroded. As Knoll says, “When the curtain goes up on the geologic record, life is already there. Every time you go by a road cut or a cliff, you are looking at a chapter in the history of life.”

Earth’s biological and physical history are intimately linked. The planetary conditions on Earth shaped the life that evolved, and life in turn dramatically altered the planet. The early Earth provided elements like carbon and nitrogen needed to create organic molecules, but as life evolved, photosynthetic bacteria filled the atmosphere with oxygen. Long before the fossil record of plants and animals begins, scientists see evidence of microbial activity throughout the planet: single-celled creatures that left behind physical structures like giant reefs as well as chemical byproducts of their metabolic activities. In recent years, Knoll and other scientists have enhanced their ability to “read” this history, finding chemical signatures of life buried deep within ancient rocks. They can use this information to understand better how the chemical environment of the planet drove evolution, and vice versa.

This knowledge can be applied to understanding the histories of other planets. “Our experience of the Earth, it doesn’t exhaust the possibilities for life in environments elsewhere, but frankly it gives us our only mooring point,” says Knoll. Just as the Earth has changed throughout its history, other planets are also dynamic systems. Knoll has been on the scientific team analyzing data from the Mars rover missions, which have provided the first chance to decipher in detail another planet’s geologic history (and because Mars has no plate tectonics, its ancient history is better preserved than Earth’s). Though Mars is devoid of water and hostile to life now, scientists have found evidence of a watery past and hope to encounter signs of microbial life. But Knoll says that it now appears that any narrow window of habitability on Mars had closed just as Earth’s was opening, around four billion years ago.

With so many planets to choose from, scientists are discussing the best ways to winnow down candidates for life. In an article in Science this past May, Sara Seager, a planetary scientist at MIT, argues that scientists should adopt a broader understanding of which planets are habitable, given the diversity of characteristics of planets and their solar systems. In environments with different pressures, temperatures, and chemical compositions, habitability might look quite different from what we expect. Sasselov wants scientists to abandon the term “habitable zone” altogether, as it focuses on a particular region rather than specific planetary conditions conducive to life. He says the debate can be resolved only with substantive research that defines exactly what these conditions are—the initiative’s goal.

Biology begins: a multitasking molecule and simple cells

In the 1950s, Stanley Miller and Harold Urey of the University of Chicago published the results of a now-famous experiment to test the possibility of creating organic compounds from the inorganic milieu of a primitive Earth. By adding an electric spark to an apparatus that contained methane, ammonia, hydrogen gas, and water, they were able to transform the carbon in the methane into simple organic compounds, including amino acids that are the basis for proteins in living cells. The Miller-Urey experiment dazzled scientists and laypeople alike with the idea that life could form spontaneously from a “primitive soup” of chemicals, and the right conditions (like a lightning strike to supply the energy).

But Sasselov says that the initial excitement faded when the complexity of DNA’s structure—solved by Francis Crick and James Watson at about the same time—was fully appreciated. It seemed impossible that the elegant helix could arise from a primitive chemical soup. “Suddenly the difference between the Miller-Urey experiment and the biomolecules of today, which are DNA and RNA, became a huge gap, an unfathomable gap,” Sasselov says. “And the initial excitement actually led to a serious depression where people left the field altogether.”

But in recent years, stalwart scientists have continued to experiment with the chemistries of early Earth, and have made progress in understanding how life could have emerged. One of them is Jack Szostak , professor of chemistry and chemical biology and of genetics at Harvard; two decades ago, he shifted the focus of his research from yeast genetics (for which he shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine) to studying RNA molecules, which he thought could shed light on the next steps of life’s emergence. “Once you have the right kinds of molecules,” he asks, “how do they get together to assemble into cells that can grow and divide and evolve?” Scientists studying the origin of life today face a chicken-and-egg problem: in modern cells, the genetic instructions of DNA are translated and carried out by RNA and proteins, which perform cellular functions—including building DNA. So how could any of these complex molecules have arisen without the aid of the others? Szostak, like many other scientists, has focused on RNA as the primary genetic molecule of early life. RNA is a less stable molecule than DNA, but its instability comes with added versatility, allowing it to perform multiple tasks, including some now performed by proteins. Szostak and others hypothesize that in primordial times, RNA served as a quick and dirty multitasking genetic molecule, able both to store biological instructions and catalyze its own reproduction; in later, more stable times, DNA and proteins could have evolved and taken over these functions with greater precision. But how did an RNA-based biology emerge from the early Earth’s chemistry?

Szostak has used a technique called in vitro selection to screen large numbers of molecules for forms that have a particular function. His lab has applied the technique to generate different kinds of RNA molecules, particularly “ribozymes”—RNA molecules that can catalyze chemical reactions the way protein enzymes do—in the hope of creating an RNA molecule that catalyzes its own replication, because an RNA molecule able to catalyze its own replication would be a prime early candidate for life. In the process, they have created diverse molecules that look much like RNA or DNA but don’t exist in nature. “All these related molecules aren’t used in biology, why is that?” he asks. “Is it because it’s actually easier to get to RNA, or a historical accident?”

More recently, Szostak’s work has focused on how the genetic material spelled out in RNA or DNA came to be bundled inside cells, which form the basis of all living organisms. The most essential feature of a cell is its membrane: a thin layer of fats that draws a critical boundary between inside and outside, self and the rest of the world. With this physical isolation, Szostak says, potentially useful genetic sequences could begin to gain advantage for themselves. His lab has managed to coax interesting behavior out of simple “protocells” (membrane-bound vesicles): getting them to grow and divide under various conditions.

“We actually can have an environmentally driven ‘cell cycle’ in which the membrane grows and divides repeatedly,” he says. “What’s missing from that picture is the genetic material, and that, at the moment, looks like a harder problem.” He says there is still a laundry list of problems that must be solved to create a plausible scenario for RNA formation, and several labs around the world are painstakingly working on each one. “I’m fairly optimistic that we’ll figure out a way to get the chemistry working in a few years,” he says.

What it was like when life began

Research focused on studying molecules in test tubes increasingly points to questions about what the early Earth was like. “We’re starting to deduce what kinds of environments you’d have to have to be compatible with the systems that we’re building,” Szostak says—making it productive to collaborate with planetary scientists to understand these scenarios better. One possibility is that geothermal vents, like the kind found in Yellowstone lakes, could have driven chemical reactions by creating drastic fluctuations of temperature in the water. Certain kinds of chemically active clays could help draw together molecules that would be unlikely to meet if circulating freely in water.

There is also evidence that the amount and type of light was important in the early Earth environment. In 2009, John Sutherland’s lab at the University of Manchester made a major breakthrough in origins of life research when it discovered a way that ribonucleotides (building blocks of RNA) could form from a mix of chemicals. But Sasselov points out that one of the steps required to make one kind of ribonucleotide was the addition of ultraviolet light. The spectra of UV light available on the early Earth were different. Stars paradoxically become brighter as they age and deplete their hydrogen cores, so the early Sun was 30 percent fainter, but it was spinning faster, creating a more powerful magnetic field that barraged the Earth’s surface with UV radiation that was 200 times stronger than it is today. Sasselov is an expert in analyzing starlight; rather than simply shining a UV bulb on chemicals in these experiments, he wants to recreate the spectra of the early Earth more faithfully in experiments involving prebiotic chemistry.

Research on microbes that live in unusual environments on Earth has shown that life can survive extremes in temperatures, acidity, pressure, dryness, or radiation levels, and thrive on nutrients like iron and hydrogen sulfide. For the purposes of the origins initiative, it’s also important to consider that life could have evolved differently than it has on the Earth. Researchers have speculated, for instance, about life forms based on silicon rather than carbon. Another difference might simply be the orientation of biological molecules; many molecules are asymmetrical and can exist in two forms that are mirror images of one another, like right and left hands. But for reasons not entirely understood, life generally prefers to use only one of these mirror images (sugars in biological organisms are always “right-handed” while proteins are always “left-handed”).

George Church , Winthrop professor of genetics, has been investigating this question of handedness, or chirality, in his quest to synthesize functioning parts of cells from scratch. Sasselov says the initiative is supporting work in Church’s lab to build a mirror-image version of a synthetic cell, to see if it’s possible to create functioning biological systems that have a different chirality than those on Earth. This is just one of the ways that synthetic biology—an emerging field that tries to redesign or construct biological parts and systems for useful purposes—can inform origins of life research.

“Is there a single biochemistry underlying any form of life anywhere, or are there alternatives?” Sasselov asks. “And if there are alternatives, do they depend on the initial conditions of the planetary environments, so one planet will have one, another planet will have another?” As scientists start to explore exoplanets, this question will become increasingly practical rather than theoretical.

The evolutionary engine

Life requires more than just getting the right molecules together—it’s an engine propelled by evolution. Martin Nowak , professor of mathematics and of biology and a member of the initiative, says that most biologists think of evolution as a process that takes place among organisms that reproduce; evolution at the level of molecules is unfamiliar. But Nowak looks at the problem from a mathematical perspective; to him, evolution “is a well defined process that can be described as precise mathematical equations.” Accordingly, he believes that the same principles governing complex life forms must have been present at the simplest levels—otherwise scenarios for the origins of life depend on a collection of random events.

Nowak argues that evolution is the driver of life, not an added feature. His research on humans and other organisms has focused on cooperation, which he says is a fundamental aspect of evolution. By the same token, he adds, “I believe that cooperation among molecules is essential.” What he calls “prelife” was not a primordial soup of chemicals but an active, generative phenomenon in which mutation and selection were already acting on molecules. Only when some of them began reproducing, out-competing the others, did life truly begin. Nowak hopes to carry this line of thinking forward with the initiative, bringing his theoretical perspective to the chemistry research already under way.

For Szostak, the question of when life began isn’t necessary to answer right now. “If we really want to understand the origin of life, what we want to understand is the process. It’s a whole pathway of steps,” he says. “Where do you draw the line between life and not-life? Well, different people might have different places where they like to draw the line. It doesn’t really matter—what matters is getting some insight into the overall process.”

Understanding that process might make the definition of life a little less mysterious. “We want to understand exactly what it takes,” says Sasselov, “not just say, ‘Something magic happens.’”

Contributing editor Courtney Humphries is a freelance science writer in Boston.

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How we will discover the mysterious origins of life once and for all

Seventy years ago, three discoveries propelled our understanding of how life on Earth began. But has the biggest clue to life's origins been staring biologists in the face all along?

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MARK GARLICK/Spl/Alamy;

HOW did life on Earth begin? Until 70 years ago, generations of scientists had failed to throw much light on biology’s murky beginnings. But then came three crucial findings in quick succession.

In April 1953, the race to uncover the structure of DNA reached its climax. Geneticists soon realised that its double helix form could help explain how life replicates itself – a fundamental property thought to have appeared at or around the origin of life. Just three weeks later, news broke of the astonishing Miller-Urey experiment, which showed how a simple cocktail of chemicals could spontaneously generate amino acids, vital for building the molecules of life. Finally, in September 1953, we gained our first accurate estimate for the age of Earth, giving us a clearer idea of exactly how old life might be.

At that point, we seemed poised to finally understand life’s origins. Today, conclusive answers remain elusive. But the past few years have brought real signs of progress.

For instance, we have found that life’s ability to replicate is not wholly reliant on DNA. We also have a far better idea of the conditions on early Earth when life first appeared – and we are beginning to conduct experiments into how it emerged that are much more sophisticated than Miller-Urey.

A radical new theory rewrites the story of how life on Earth began

It has long been thought that the ingredients for life came together slowly, bit by bit. Now there is evidence it all happened at once in a chemical big bang

So, 70 years on from that incredible year of breakthroughs, how has our picture of life’s origins changed? And what remains to be figured out before we can satisfactorily answer biology’s ultimate question?

Definitions of life

“I think in the 50s we knew very little about life,” says …

Article amended on 3 November 2023

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The Origins of Life

A mineralogist believes he’s discovered how life’s early building blocks connected four billion years ago

Helen Fields

A hilly green campus in Washington, D.C. houses two departments of the Carnegie Institution for Science: the Geophysical Laboratory and the quaintly named Department of Terrestrial Magnetism. When the institution was founded, in 1902, measuring the earth’s magnetic field was a pressing scientific need for makers of nautical maps. Now, the people who work here—people like Bob Hazen—have more fundamental concerns. Hazen and his colleagues are using the institution’s “pressure bombs”—breadbox-size metal cylinders that squeeze and heat minerals to the insanely high temperatures and pressures found inside the earth—to decipher nothing less than the origins of life.

Hazen, a mineralogist, is investigating how the first organic chemicals—the kind found in living things—formed and then found each other nearly four billion years ago. He began this research in 1996, about two decades after scientists discovered hydrothermal vents—cracks in the deep ocean floor where water is heated to hundreds of degrees Fahrenheit by molten rock. The vents fuel strange underwater ecosystems inhabited by giant worms, blind shrimp and sulfur-eating bacteria. Hazen and his colleagues believed the complex, high-pressure vent environment—with rich mineral deposits and fissures spewing hot water into cold—might be where life began.

Hazen realized he could use the pressure bomb to test this theory. The device (technically known as an “internally heated, gas media pressure vessel”) is like a super-high-powered kitchen pressure cooker, producing temperatures exceeding 1,800 degrees and pressures up to 10,000 times that of the atmosphere at sea level. (If something were to go wrong, the ensuing explosion could take out a good part of the lab building; the operator runs the pressure bomb from behind an armored barrier.)

In his first experiment with the device, Hazen encased a few milligrams of water, an organic chemical called pyruvate and a powder that produces carbon dioxide all in a tiny capsule made of gold (which does not react with the chemicals inside) that he had welded himself. He put three capsules into the pressure bomb at 480 degrees and 2,000 atmospheres. And then he went to lunch. When he took the capsules out two hours later, the contents had turned into tens of thousands of different compounds. In later experiments, he combined nitrogen, ammonia and other molecules plausibly present on the early earth. In these experiments, Hazen and his colleagues created all sorts of organic molecules, including amino acids and sugars—the stuff of life.

Hazen’s experiments marked a turning point. Before them, origins-of-life research had been guided by a scenario scripted in 1871 by Charles Darwin himself: “But if (and oh! what a big if!) we could conceive in some warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity, etc., present, that a proteine compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes....”

In 1952, Stanley Miller, a graduate student in chemistry at the University of Chicago, attempted to create Darwin’s dream. Miller set up a container holding water (representing the early ocean) connected by glass tubes to one containing ammonia, methane and hydrogen—a mixture scientists of the day thought approximated the early atmosphere. A flame heated the water, sending vapor upward. In the atmosphere flask, electric sparks simulated lightning. The experiment was such a long shot that Miller’s adviser, Harold Urey, thought it a waste of time. But over the next few days, the water turned deep red. Miller had created a broth of amino acids.

Forty-four years later, Bob Hazen’s pressure bomb experiments would show that not just lightning storms but also hydrothermal vents potentially could have sparked life. His work soon led him to a more surprising conclusion: the basic molecules of life, it turns out, are able to form in all sorts of places: near hydrothermal vents, volcanoes, even on meteorites. Cracking open space rocks, astrobiologists have discovered amino acids, compounds similar to sugars and fatty acids, and nucleobases found in RNA and DNA. So it’s even possible that some of the first building blocks of life on earth came from outer space.

Hazen’s findings came at an auspicious time. “A few years before, we would have been laughed out of the origins-of-life community,” he says. But NASA, then starting up its astrobiology program, was looking for evidence that life could have evolved in odd environments—such as on other planets or their moons. “NASA [wanted] justification for going to Europa, to Titan, to Ganymede, to Callisto, to Mars,” says Hazen. If life does exist there, it’s likely to be under the surface, in warm, high-pressure environments.

Back on earth, Hazen says that by 2000 he had concluded that “making the basic building blocks of life is easy.” A harder question: How did the right building blocks get incorporated? Amino acids come in multiple forms, but only some are used by living things to form proteins. How did they find each other?

In a windowed corner of a lab building at the Carnegie Institution, Hazen is drawing molecules on a notepad and sketching the earliest steps on the road to life. “We’ve got a prebiotic ocean and down in the ocean floor, you’ve got rocks,” he says. “And basically there’s molecules here that are floating around in solution, but it’s a very dilute soup.” For a newly formed amino acid in the early ocean, it must have been a lonely life indeed. The familiar phrase “primordial soup” sounds rich and thick, but it was no beef stew. It was probably just a few molecules here and there in a vast ocean. “So the chances of a molecule over here bumping into this one, and then actually a chemical reaction going on to form some kind of larger structure, is just infinitesimally small,” Hazen continues. He thinks that rocks—whether the ore deposits that pile up around hydrothermal vents or those that line a tide pool on the surface—may have been the matchmakers that helped lonely amino acids find each other.

Rocks have texture, whether shiny and smooth or craggy and rough. Molecules on the surface of minerals have texture, too. Hydrogen atoms wander on and off a mineral’s surface, while electrons react with various molecules in the vicinity. An amino acid that drifts near a mineral could be attracted to its surface. Bits of amino acids might form a bond; form enough bonds and you’ve got a protein.

Back at the Carnegie lab, Hazen’s colleagues are looking into the first step in that courtship: Kateryna Klochko is preparing an experiment that—when combined with other experiments and a lot of math—should show how certain molecules stick to minerals. Do they adhere tightly to the mineral, or does a molecule attach in just one place, leaving the rest of it mobile and thereby increasing the chances it will link up to other molecules?

Klochko gets out a rack, plastic tubes and the liquids she needs. “It’s going to be very boring and tedious,” she warns. She puts a tiny dab of a powdered mineral in a four-inch plastic tube, then adds arginine, an amino acid, and a liquid to adjust the acidity. Then, while a gas bubbles through the solution, she waits...for eight minutes. The work may seem tedious indeed, but it takes concentration. “That’s the thing, each step is critical,” she says. “Each of them, if you make a mistake, the data will look weird, but you won’t know where you made a mistake.” She mixes the ingredients seven times, in seven tubes. As she works, “The Scientist” comes on the radio: “Nooooobody saaaaid it was easyyyy,” sings Coldplay vocalist Chris Martin.

After two hours, the samples go into a rotator, a kind of fast Ferris wheel for test tubes, to mix all night. In the morning, Klochko will measure how much arginine remains in the liquid; the rest of the amino acid will have stuck to the mineral powder’s tiny surfaces.

She and other researchers will repeat the same experiment with different minerals and different molecules, over and over in various combinations. The goal is for Hazen and his colleagues to be able to predict more complex interactions, like those that may have taken place in the earth’s early oceans.

How long will it take to go from studying how molecules interact with minerals to understanding how life began? No one knows. For one thing, scientists have never settled on a definition of life. Everyone has a general idea of what it is and that self-replication and passing information from generation to generation are key. Gerald Joyce, of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, jokes that the definition should be “something like ‘that which is squishy.’”

Hazen’s work has implications beyond the origins of life. “Amino-acids-sticking-to-crystals is everywhere in the environment,” he says. Amino acids in your body stick to titanium joints; films of bacteria grow inside pipes; everywhere proteins and minerals meet, amino acids are interacting with crystals. “It’s every rock, it’s every soil, it’s the walls of the building, it’s microbes that interact with your teeth and bones, it’s everywhere,” Hazen says.

At his weekend retreat overlooking the Chesapeake Bay, Hazen, 61, peers through binoculars at some black-and-white ducks bobbing around in circles and stirring the otherwise still water. He thinks they’re herding fish—a behavior he’s never seen before. He calls for his wife, Margee, to come take a look: “There’s this really interesting phenomenon going on with the buffleheads!”

Living room shelves hold things the couple has found nearby: beach glass, a basketful of minerals, and fossilized barnacles, coral and great white shark teeth. A 15-million-year-old whale jawbone, discovered on the beach at low tide, is spread out in pieces on the dining room table, where Hazen is cleaning it. “It was part of a living, breathing whale when this was a tropical paradise,” he says.

Hazen traces his interest in prehistory to his Cleveland childhood, growing up not far from a fossil quarry. “I collected my first trilobite when I was 9 or 10,” he says. “I just thought they were cool,” he says of the marine arthropods that went extinct millions of years ago. After his family moved to New Jersey, his eighth-grade science teacher encouraged him to check out the minerals in nearby towns. “He gave me maps and he gave me directions and he gave me specimens, and my parents would take me to these places,” says Hazen. “So I just got hooked.”

After taking a paleontology class together at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Hazen and Margee Hindle, his future wife, started collecting trilobites. They now have thousands. “Some of them are incredibly cute,” says Hazen. “This bulbous nose—you want to hug them.”

There are trilobites all over Hazen’s office and a basement guest room at the Hazens’ Bethesda, Maryland, home—they cover shelves and fill desk drawers and cabinets. There’s even trilobite art by his now grown children, Ben, 34, who is studying to be an art therapist, and Liz, 32, a teacher. “This is the ultimate cute trilobite,” he says, reaching into a cabinet and taking out a Paralejurus . “How can you not love that?”

Hazen calls himself a “natural collector.” After he and Margee bought a picture frame that just happened to hold a photograph of a brass band, they started buying other pictures of brass bands; eventually they wrote a history of brass bands— Music Men —and a time in America when almost every town had its own. (Bob has played trumpet professionally since 1966.) He has also published a collection of 18th-and 19th-century poems about geology, most of which, he says, are pretty bad ( “And O ye rocks! schist, gneiss, whate’er ye be/Ye varied strata, names too hard for me” ). But the couple tend not to hold on to things. “As weird as this sounds, as a collector, I’ve never been acquisitive,” Bob says. “To have been able to hold them and study them up close is really a privilege. But they shouldn’t be in private hands.” Which is why the Hazen Collection of Band Photographs and Ephemera, ca. 1818-1931, is now at the National Museum of American History. Harvard has the mineral collection he started in eighth grade, and the Hazens are in the process of donating their trilobites to the National Museum of Natural History.

After considering, for some time, how minerals may have helped life evolve, Hazen is now investigating the other side of the equation: how life spurred the development of minerals. He explains that there were only about a dozen different minerals—including diamonds and graphite—in dust grains that pre-date the solar system. Another 50 or so formed as the sun ignited. On earth, volcanoes emitted basalt, and plate tectonics made ores of copper, lead and zinc. “The minerals become players in this sort of epic story of exploding stars and planetary formation and the triggering of plate tectonics,” he says. “And then life plays a key role.” By introducing oxygen into the atmosphere, photosynthesis made possible new kinds of minerals—turquoise, azurite and malachite, for example. Mosses and algae climbed onto land, breaking down rock and making clay, which made bigger plants possible, which made deeper soil, and so on. Today there are about 4,400 known minerals—more than two-thirds of which came into being only because of the way life changed the planet. Some of them were created exclusively by living organisms.

Everywhere he looks, Hazen says, he sees the same fascinating process: increasing complexity. “You see the same phenomena over and over, in languages and in material culture—in life itself. Stuff gets more complicated.” It’s the complexity of the hydrothermal vent environment—gushing hot water mixing with cold water near rocks, and ore deposits providing hard surfaces where newly formed amino acids could congregate—that makes it such a good candidate as a cradle of life. “Organic chemists have long used test tubes,” he says, “but the origin of life uses rocks, it uses water, it uses atmosphere. Once life gets a foothold, the fact that the environment is so variable is what drives evolution.” Minerals evolve, life arises and diversifies, and along come trilobites, whales, primates and, before you know it, brass bands.

Helen Fields has written about snakehead fish and the discovery of soft tissue in dinosaur fossils for Smithsonian . Amanda Lucidon is based in Washington, D.C.

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Research Center a Hub for Origins of Life Studies

Earth-life science institute in japan.

Research into the origin of life on Earth is notoriously difficult. The field has produced many new insights into how specific chemical building blocks form and the way an organism’s basic architecture is constructed.

But putting together some of the pieces of the puzzle has not led to any breakthrough moment when the process could be described as understood. As a sign of how far away that moment is likely to be, there isn’t even any real consensus view on how to define life.

Despite this sobering reality — or perhaps because of it — a new center for the study of early Earth and the origin of life was formed several years ago with the goal of approaching the issue in new ways.

The sponsor of this substantial effort is the government of Japan and its World Premier International Research Center Initiative ( WPI .) In late 2012, the government committed $100 million over 10 years to build and fund an institute that would not only tackle the fundamental questions of life, but would approach it in a way intentionally divergent from how science is conducted in Japan.

Biogeochemist Yuichiro Ueno in his lab at ELSI built the instrument (to his right) to further his research.

The institute would recruit and hire dozens of researchers from Japan and abroad (the most interest has come from American, French and British researchers) representing a broad range of disciplines, and would make English the common language of all the institute’s endeavors.

Four years into the effort, the Earth-Life Science Institute at the Tokyo Institute of Technology ( ELSI ) is now a significant international center for origins of life study. It has attracted many early career, and some senior researchers to its inviting new building on the campus of Tokyo Institute of Technology.

Kei Hirose is the director of ELSI and an expert in the field of deep Earth dynamics and materials with some important discoveries to his name. The overall focus of the institute, he said, is the early Earth’s transition from geochemistry to biochemistry, or from a world of rock and atmosphere and water to one that included biology.

“We strongly hold that progress in understanding the origin of life requires close collaboration between geoscientists and bioscientists,” he said. “There are lots of scenarios about how life might have emerged — the RNA world, metabolism first, hydrothermal vents — but for us they have to link life and the environment to be at all persuasive.”

ELSI Director Kei Hirose and Councilor Piet Hut founded ELSi with funds from the government of Japan.

The heart of an origins of life institute is inevitably in its labs, but ELSI also has its “Agora,” named after the central gathering place in early Greek city-states. A large, clean-lined hall with comfortable chairs, chalkboards covering many walls and engaged scientists often grouped around them, it is where the unscripted but invaluable seeds of collaboration are often sown. The phrase “let’s meet at the Agora” is often heard at ELSI .

Piet Hut, a computational astrophysicist and head of the interdisciplinary program at Princeton University’s Institute for Advanced Studies ( IAS ) was one of the early creators of the ELSI approach and culture. In return for an unusual degree of freedom and support, Hut said, the full-time ELSI scientists were informally asked to honor an unusual request.

“All I asked them to do was for everyone to come to tea for at least fifteen minutes, from 3 pm to 3:15, every day.”

His expectation is for the researchers to approach their work as a shared venture, whereby talking and working with colleagues outside their disciplines becomes a regular part of life. Hut is of the view that questions surrounding the origin of life can be successfully tackled only by scientists who are immersed in them.

It isn’t easy to start an institute from scratch, and harder still to do it in a cross-cultural, inter-disciplinary way. Attempting this approach in a country where science traditionally comes with a strict hierarchy, and deep but narrow focus on subjects means taking on even more. After some inevitable fits and starts the institute as a whole has coalesced generally, but by no means exclusively, around a handful of themes.

Magma Ocean

ELSI is perhaps best known for its work on the “magma ocean” that covered the still-growing Earth in the late accretion phase, a phase of planetary formation thought to occur on many, or perhaps most, just-formed terrestrial planets and moons.

John Hernlund, an ELSI vice director and a specialist in planetary formation and evolution, said the vast molten rock stew — exceeding temperatures of 2000o F or more and in places possibly as deep as 700 miles — was the kitchen in which all the Earth’s elements and compounds boiled, transformed, bonded and became the material from which all else formed.

More than 20 ELSI researchers regularly study magma ocean dynamics and its role in the evolution of the planet from fiery ball to life’s host, Hernlund said, though some would not yet see their particular speciality as connected to that larger whole. Among the results from the group: models showing that the largely smooth surface of Venus may well be the result of the presence of a 3.5 billion year magma ocean that couldn’t cool down because of all the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

ELSI principal investigator Eric Smith (far left) says the goal of the institute is to shape each other’s minds.

Messy Chemistry

A diverse group of scientists is also pioneering a “messy chemistry” approach to how life might have started. It focuses on the complex tars of early Earth, which have generally been ignored in favor of looking at “cleaner” pathways to explain the emergence of specific building blocks of life. The diversity of life on Earth suggests origins equally as complex, says ELSI chemist Irena Mamajanov, and the “messy chemistry” group is working on how those ungainly macromolecules could straighten into the the building blocks of life.

Additionally, ELSI wants to be a center of efforts to explore the evolutionary pathways of molecules central to biology, and to do it in terms of “paleo-biology.” Several ELSI researchers and outside scientists associated with the institute are pioneering the field as another approach to the origin of life.

ELSI research scientist Masafumi Kameya, for instance, has been studying microbial metabolisms and has undertaken a difficult and painstaking characterization of the enzymes of ancient and universal pathways. Betul Kacar, a organismic and evolutionary biologist at Harvard University and ELSI , trained in resurrecting ancient molecules and is now exploring how her techniques can be adapted to learn about metabolic pathways with ties to the geochemical record. And ELSI’s Shawn McGlynn, a biogeochemist, has studied the molecules that link early sulfur metabolic processes to the flow of energy in living organism.

Earlier this year, the National Science Foundation selected a group including Kacar, McGlynn and ELSI physical chemist Chris Butch (the latter two also associated with the Blue Marble Space Institute) for a grant to study the role of ancient intermediary compounds called thioesters, which are central to the essential-for-life process of transforming inorganic carbon into organic carbon.

As ELSI principal investigator Eric Smith put it: “So either in- house or in our network, we are studying the three most fundamental innovations in carbon fixation, from a molecular systems evolutionary biology perspective.” He said the somewhat disparate group of researchers “found that they were traveling companions, and that ELSI was eager to be a natural home for the community they would form.”

Another emphasis is on adapting some of the insights of the alternative life field to better understand “emergence” in the context of life, complexity and cognition, among other areas of study. ELSI artificial life researcher Nathaniel Virgo, for instance, is using alternative life approaches to test the hypothesis that pre-biotic (i.e. non-living) materials can “evolve” through a kind of natural selection into materials more useful to life.

Some of the researchers, collaborators and staff at ELSI during a workshop last year.

Going International

In the few early years of its existence, director Hirose said ELSI researchers came primarily from Japanese institutions because organizers had limited knowledge and experience in recruiting from abroad. ELSI , he said, had a quite Japanese feel, which was definitely contrary to the goal of creating “a premier international research center,” as outlined by the Japanese government in its initiative.

“By today a transition has happened,” Hirose said. “When our non-Japanese scientists exceeded 20 percent of the total, then they stopped accommodating to Japanese ways and returned to their international ways. And that’s what we have wanted.”

Of the 63 researchers directly at ELSI now, almost half are from abroad. And as a sign of the Institute’s ambitions, it is a prime sponsor of the upcoming Astrobiology Science Conference (Abscicon) in Mesa, Arizona, one of the largest and best attended gatherings in the field.

ELSI is additionally unique in its creation of the ELSI Origins Network ( EON ,) a program funded by the John Templeton Foundation that brings postdocs from around the world to Tokyo. As part of the effort to spread and encourage origins of life research, EON requires that each of the postdocs split their two year appointment between ELSI and their home institutions.

The goal is to attract self-starting young scientists willing to travel and try something new; people schooled in a particular discipline but intrigued by how their knowledge can help the broader effort shed light on the origin of life and formation of Earth.

Donato Giovannelli, a native of Italy and researcher at Rutgers University, is one of the current 10 EON postdoctoral researchers. He’s an expert on extremophiles and marine biology, and is particularly drawn to understanding what extremophile genomes can reveal about relatively new adaptations from ancient ones. He looks back to the time when an organism survived in extreme conditions using just one electron receptor.

“I am very interested in what extremophiles can tell us about the origin of life, and I think it’s quite a bit,” he said. That has led to work at ELSI with artificial life specialists as well as computer modelers, and is part of the molecular paleontology study area the institute is building up.

Japan has a long history of being alternately tightly closed to the outside world and then eager for reinvigoration from abroad. In the case of ELSI , and several other related institutes, the goal seems to go well beyond catching up to the outside to becoming a visionary and inherently risk-taking pioneer. And if this approach succeeds at ELSI , the origins of life field could be in for some most intriguing surprises.

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Astrobiology

A Strategy for Origins of Life Research

Caleb scharf.

1 Columbia University, New York, New York, USA.

Nathaniel Virgo

2 Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI), Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan.

H. James Cleaves, II

3 Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), Princeton, New Jersey, USA.

Masashi Aono

Nathanael aubert-kato.

4 University of Ochanomizu, Tokyo, Japan.

Arsev Aydinoglu

5 Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey.

Ana Barahona

6 Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, Mexico.

Laura M. Barge

7 NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, USA.

Steven A. Benner

8 Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution, Gainesville, Florida, USA.

Martin Biehl

9 University of Hertfordshire, Hertfordshire, UK.

10 University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan.

Ramon Brasser

Christopher j. butch.

11 ELSI Origins Network (EON), Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI), Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan, and Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA.

Kuhan Chandru

Leroy cronin.

12 University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK.

Sebastian Danielache

13 Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan.

Jakob Fischer

27 Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, Germany.

John Hernlund

Takashi ikegami, kensei kobayashi.

14 Yokohama National University, Yokohama, Japan.

Carlos Mariscal

15 Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada.

Shawn McGlynn

16 Tokyo Metropolitan University, Tokyo, Japan.

Brice Menard

17 Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.

Norman Packard

18 ProtoLife.

Robert Pascal

19 CNRS—University of Montpellier, Montpellier, France.

Juli Pereto

20 University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain.

Sudha Rajamani

21 Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune, India.

Lana Sinapayen

Christopher switzer.

22 University of California, Riverside, California, USA.

23 Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), Yokosuka, Japan.

24 Center for Earth System Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.

Yuichiro Ueno

Mary voytek.

25 NASA Astrobiology Program, Washington, DC, USA.

Olaf Witkowski

Hikaru yabuta.

26 Osaka University, Osaka, Japan.

1.1. A workshop and this document

1.2.1. what do we mean by the origins of life (ool), 1.2.2. defining life, 1.2.3. how should we characterize approaches to ool science, 1.2.4. one path to life or many, 2.1.1. domain 1: theory, 2.1.2. domain 2: practice, 2.1.3. domain 3: process, 2.1.4. domain 4: future studies, 2.2. eon roadmap, 2.3. relationship to nasa astrobiology roadmap and strategy documents and the european astromap.

Appendix I
Appendix II
Supplementary Materials
References

1. Introduction

A workshop was held August 26–28, 2015, by the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) Origins Network (EON, see Appendix I ) at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. This meeting gathered a diverse group of around 40 scholars researching the origins of life (OoL) from various perspectives with the intent to find common ground, identify key questions and investigations for progress, and guide EON by suggesting a roadmap of activities.

Specific challenges that the attendees were encouraged to address included the following: What key questions, ideas, and investigations should the OoL research community address in the near and long term? How can this community better organize itself and prioritize its efforts? What roles can particular subfields play, and what can ELSI and EON do to facilitate research progress? (See also Appendix II .)

The present document is a product of that workshop; a white paper that serves as a record of the discussion that took place and a guide and stimulus to the solution of the most urgent and important issues in the study of the OoL. This paper is not intended to be comprehensive or a balanced representation of the opinions of the entire OoL research community. It is intended to present a number of important position statements that contain many aspirational goals and suggestions as to how progress can be made in understanding the OoL.

The key role played in the field by current societies and recurring meetings over the past many decades is fully acknowledged, including the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life (ISSOL) and its official journal Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres , as well as the International Society for Artificial Life (ISAL).

1.2. Framing origins of life science

H. James Cleaves II (ELSI), Caleb Scharf (Columbia University), Nathaniel Virgo (ELSI)

Since the early 20 th century the phrase OoL has been used to refer to the events that occurred during the transition from nonliving to living systems on Earth, i.e., the origin of terrestrial biology (Oparin, 1924 ; Haldane, 1929 ). The term has largely replaced earlier concepts such as abiogenesis (Kamminga, 1980 ; Fry, 2000 ).

The historical development of OoL science was dominated by geology ( e.g. , as the age of Earth and the nature of its surface environment at the time of the OoL are central to understanding the problem), paleontology (the earliest evidence for life offers constraints on the timing of the OoL and potentially the earliest niches), and comparative biology (in that common ancestral biological properties may be inferred).

However, OoL questions have also driven experimental sciences. These include chemistry (allowing potential steps in the process of the OoL to be directly tested in the laboratory) and molecular biology (as it contributes to phylogenetic reconstructions and more recently to experimental studies of putative “RNA World” chemistry) as principal areas of inquiry. These areas have in turn generated many new questions, for example the “Paradoxes” or “Open Questions” in the OoL (Benner, 2014 ; Luisi and Kuruma, 2014 ).

Origins of life science has also grown to encompass what is assumed to be possible in other planetary contexts, opening up the realm of cosmic OoL, where fields like planetary science and astronomy can provide insight.

The origin of life has also been a long-established topic in theoretical and evolutionary biology and theoretical chemistry. Within these fields, topics such as the minimal fidelity of replication required for sustained evolution (Eigen and Schuster, 1978 ) or the encapsulation of metabolic reactions within membranes (Gánti, 2003 ) can be addressed somewhat independently of any specific molecular context.

Imperfect reproduction, replication, or division (which are subtly different processes) are all related to the possibility of population growth and the natural selection and evolution of living systems. For many researchers in systems chemistry, these processes are the touchstones that readily capture the nature of life and its emergence. In this context, the OoL can be considered as a continuous, gradual process starting from chemical autocatalysis or chemical replication and then complexifying into more sophisticated forms of replication.

Recently (Pascal and Pross, 2015 ), an attempt was made to reconcile Darwinian theory and the second law of thermodynamics within a unifying framework through the concept of persistence. This approach applies to regular systems as a drive toward increased probability (entropy). Provided they are held far from equilibrium ( i.e. , fed with energy), systems that are capable of making more of themselves can evolve toward increased kinetic stability, which is another form of persistence.

Questions conceptually (and critically) related to the OoL have also been found in other domains. As physics progressed over the 20 th century, new puzzles arose regarding self-organization in non-equilibrium systems, with life being seen as one example of a more general phenomenon (Schrödinger, 1944 ; Maturana and Varela, 1980 ; Rosen, 1991 ). More recently, the spontaneous organization of life-like processes in non-natural milieu has become a domain of inquiry in its own right, for example, in vitro in the form of novel chemical systems or in silico , adding artificial life (A-Life) studies and computer science to the investigative repertoire.

A key outcome of this workshop ( see Outcomes below ) was a consensus that the interaction and integration of these many fields will be crucial for making significant progress in the years to come. Many of the discussions and commentaries that supplement this white paper detail how the various approaches to understanding the OoL may interrelate. These ideas have been further distilled into a proposed set of definitions for types of OoL and types of approaches to studying the OoL.

A definition of life is notoriously difficult, although many putative ones exist (Pályi et al. , 2002 ; Bedau and Cleland, 2010 ). By contrast, the concept of “origin” is much more rigid, generally connoting the point of inception of some phenomenon. Therefore, we suggest that what OoL studies all ultimately address is the onset of the various organizational phenomena that we associate with the living world . This unites all areas of research, from laboratory experimentation to Earth and planetary exploration, theory, and computation.

Nonetheless, while all fields that study the OoL ultimately study lifelike phenomena, the specific goals of each approach may be somewhat different. For example, the field of A-Life has been characterized as the study of “life as it could be” versus “life as it is” (Langton, 1989 ), with the aim of understanding biological phenomena (and sometimes their origins) on an abstract, generalizable level.

In contrast, approaches rooted in biochemistry or geochemistry are often concerned with much more detailed puzzles regarding molecular mechanisms that were at play on early Earth. We will see throughout this paper and its supplementary material that these sets of questions are not as neatly separable as traditional disciplinary boundaries may make them appear.

With respect to the OoL on Earth, investigations have expanded over the years to encompass a great deal of “ancillary” information, including prebiological geochemical conditions and post-OoL biological evolution and ecology. Many of these avenues of research are capable of giving insights to the core phenomena of the OoL. We also note that from the standpoint of any of these disciplines the central problem of the OoL is not yet resolved. Therefore, it may at present be counterproductive to too-hastily restrict or reject any seemingly oblique approaches.

Rather, we strongly recommend that OoL researchers seek to frame their efforts in the spirit of cooperation between multiple fields of inquiry, each driven by its own set of core questions and with its own approach to answering them.

Although this recommendation might appear self-evident, the suggested interdisciplinary collaboration is not always straightforward or obvious. Increasing the communication and understanding between the diverse existing approaches is a first step. The eventual goal must be to advance the entire OoL enterprise by enabling new insights, establishing common resources, and convincing funding agencies of the significance of OoL phenomena.

Approaches to the OoL can be broadly divided into three classes, which can be termed historical, synthetic, and universal. This need not be taken as an absolute classification but rather as a bird's-eye characterization of the ways in which the central questions can be approached, with many studies falling into more than one category ( see Outcomes below ).

Historical approaches are characterized by research to determine the path of events that led to biology on Earth (and elsewhere, to the degree that such studies are generalizable). For historical approaches, success is typically judged by explaining evidence left in the geological record or in the nature of biochemistry, or by constructing narratives that are consistent with this evidence—typically constrained by presumed “plausible” prebiological environmental conditions and available reagents.

Synthetic approaches are less concerned with how life arose historically and more with how to create the process de novo , either in simulation or in the laboratory. Success is measured in terms of being able to create a system with some desired set of properties, even if it does not resemble biological life in every respect. Synthetic approaches are not always concerned with prebiotic plausibility and thus can aim for something that differs markedly from “real” or “modern” biology in terms of composition. This includes much of the work in A-Life, as well as attempts to create chemically orthogonal “living” systems in vitro or in unicellular contexts. We offer a more fine-grained classification of synthetic approaches in the Outcomes below.

Finally, universal approaches are concerned primarily with questions about necessary and sufficient conditions: can life emerge on planets quite different from Earth, or even in simulated “universes” with quite different “physics” from ours? Are there deep theoretical principles through which central processes in the OoL can be understood, irrespective of the domain in which they occur? This category includes aspects of astrobiology, A-Life, systems science, and evolutionary theory.

The concept map ( Fig. 1 ) illustrates the relation and overlap of the principal variety of OoL investigative approaches detailed in this white paper to these proposed domains.

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is fig-1.jpg

A concept map of the approaches to OoL science (Historical, Synthetic, and Universal) and where selected current areas of study sit in relation to each other and these three approaches. For example, the study of chemical systems overlaps with all three approaches, whereas the study of early Earth is primarily concerned with the single, Historical, nature of terrestrial OoL.

The historical OoL on Earth remain almost entirely mysterious. Although there are a great many more-or-less detailed scenarios for how life may have originated on Earth, none has yet been generally accepted by a clear majority of the scientific community. Among other uncertainties, we do not currently know whether the path by which life arose on Earth is the only possible one in a natural context, or whether there are many other possibilities in alternate environments that could exist on other early Earth-like planets, or still others that might only be possible on other types of planetary bodies.

Figure 2 illustrates two scenarios. At one extreme (left panel) there is only one possible sequence of events that could result in our planet developing a biosphere, implying that life could not emerge unless very specific conditions were present on Earth throughout its history.

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is fig-2.jpg

Left: A single historical path from an abiotic to a biotic planet. Right: Many possible paths leading to multiple end points, representing states that differ in some significant way from the biosphere we know on Earth.

By contrast, the right-hand diagram shows an alternative picture in which the same starting point—a prebiotic, Earth-like planet—can progress along multiple developmental paths. These converge onto multiple biological end states, with greater or lesser resemblance to Earth's modern biosphere. It is possible that life could originate on almost any sufficiently Earth-like planet, but the route through which this occurs could be wildly variable and thus extremely difficult to constrain.

We note that the frequency with which convergent evolution is observed in biology suggests that, at least after the emergence of Darwinian selection, there are often multiple paths to very similar end states. In this context, the crucial questions center on the relative ease with which life originates and the feedback between biology and global geochemical cycles.

On the other hand, observations of Mars and Venus suggest that a planet can fairly easily fail to be “Earth-like” enough to develop a long-lived surface biosphere, even if conditions early in the histories of those planets were conducive to the OoL. The key point here is that the space in between these two extremes is not currently well mapped.

The sketch in Fig. 3 might be a more realistic representation than that shown in Fig. 2 . Here, the planet's biotic development sometimes follows a multitude of branching and diverging paths, but at other times the paths pass through a bottleneck, that is, a specific sequence of events that must occur at the local or planetary scale for biological evolution to progress.

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is fig-3.jpg

A bottleneck in the space of paths to life; some parts of the story are much more tightly constrained than others. In contrast to the case illustrated in Fig. 2 (right panel) where numerous “histories” lead to an OoL event, here only a specific “history” leads to an OoL event.

As an example from a later stage of evolution, pointed out by Maynard Smith and Szathmáry (1997): There seem to be many ways in which multicellularity can arise, as evidenced by its multiple origins on Earth, but the origin of eukaryotes may have happened only once and may have required a very specific set of circumstances to have produced the functional characteristics we observe today.

Historical contingency in biological evolution continues to be hotly debated and explored ( e.g. , Blount et al. , 2008 ) and may indeed be informative for prebiological evolution. But we note that both random and deterministic processes are likely at play and that very rare or unlikely reaction pathways may nonetheless be deducible from first principles.

We suggest that the pathway maps sketched here ( Figs. 2 and and3) 3 ) can serve a number of critical purposes. First, they can form the basis of a useful tool for conceptual organization, inspiration, and communication between disciplines ( e.g. , by clearly illustrating concepts such as bottlenecks, branching, and multiple OoL).

Second, we propose that an important task in understanding the historical OoL is to develop these cartoon sketches to produce a real, quantitative map of the pathways and constraints to abiogenesis. If some of the major bottlenecks could be definitively identified, this would represent significant progress. Even a more abstract proof-of-concept from a sufficiently complex simulation—providing an example of spreading emergence through one or more bottlenecks—could be very helpful.

Each type of approach to understanding the OoL has a role to play in this endeavor. For the historical, the geological record could in principle place strong constraints on the process for Earth. Such constraints may also hint at the frequency of occurrence of an origin of life on Earth-analog worlds. However, critical questions remain on the probability of life arising on worlds unlike Earth, or under experimental conditions or in abstract simulations that do not resemble any natural environment.

In places where a part of the story is not well understood, synthetic approaches can blaze new trails, demonstrating phenomena that may be analogous to processes in the natural environment. Universal approaches come to the fore where historical bottlenecks are not evident, helping elucidate cases where many possible processes can lead to the same end result.

We suggest also that mapping the unknown territory of the OoL in this way can help catalyze a shift in focus toward breaking down the problem into hypotheses that can be tested independently of one another. This process will in turn help foster better communication between disciplines and lead to faster progress in understanding OoL phenomena.

2. A Strategy for Origins of Life Research

2.1. outcomes—key questions and investigations.

(Based on a summarizing group discussion with contributions from all attendees, led by panel: Kensei Kobayashi, Leroy Cronin, Nathaniel Virgo, Christopher Switzer, Mary Voytek, Laura M. Barge, Robert Pascal, H. James Cleaves II.)

We have distilled the outcome of the specific discussions from the workshop into four domains: Theory , Practice , Process , and Future Studies . Within these divisions are sets of aspirational and actionable items that, if pursued, are proposed as a viable strategy for advancing understanding of the OoL in the near and mid term. As explained above, this distillation is not intended to be fully comprehensive. This listing represents a snapshot of opinion and discussion captured at a particular moment in the field's development. Additional opinions, perspectives, and reviews are catalogued in the Supplementary Material .

Theories and definitions of life. The discussion at the workshop identified an urgent need for a better, comprehensive theory of life to better define the aims of OoL investigations, that is, to define the phenomena whose spontaneous onset is being studied. It was recognized that arguments or controversy over definitions, while not always helpful, may continue while we lack such a theory ( cf. Cleland and Chyba, 2002 ). It was also noted that a compatible, substrate-neutral, quantitative theory of evolution is highly desirable.

Thus, our recommendation is an ongoing focus on the general development of theory, rather than on the widespread adoption of any particular existing framework. Previously proposed frameworks, such as autopoiesis or the chemoton, have nonetheless provided useful and fundamental insights.

We also note that a theory of life may be within reach (via advances in synthetic biology, A-Life, etc.) while a theory of the OoL still requires fundamental, perhaps revolutionary, developments.

It was generally agreed that progress will require treating life in terms of process and as a system. These approaches are closely aligned to the abstractions studied in the field of A-Life, such as dynamical systems, as well as those that have been explored previously in systems science and cybernetics.

Progress toward a theory of life may require substantial prior and parallel experimental work to better quantify the nature of relevant systems. There was broad group consensus that chemical systems are of particular interest here, not only because real biological systems are chemical in nature but because the nature of chemistry may present a unique substrate for the instantiation of OoL phenomena.

Many facets of OoL science are extraordinarily complex scientific or technological problems in their own right. For example, while scientists now have relatively simple and robust tools for studying the emergence and frequency of RNA-based catalysts from very large sets of random polymers, such technologies are not yet as widely available for peptides or other informational molecules besides the biological ones. The investigation and solution of these problems may require augmentation with tools such as “computer-assisted thinking” to help with abstraction and concept extraction (the reduction of a problem or phenomenon to a set of essential characteristics).

Even a general theory of the origins of life may not allow a full explanation of the specifics of terrestrial OoL, due to the historical nature of the question. But substantial progress should be possible through exploring and understanding the emergence of synthetic or A-Life and an enhanced dialogue between researchers in traditionally non-aligned fields. We note that there are significant ongoing efforts, including those focused on a re-conceptualization of the OoL ( https://carnegiescience.edu/events/lectures/re-conceptualizing-origin-life ), growing out of work on modeling OoL ( e.g. , the MOL collaboration, https://github.com/ModelingOriginsofLife/March2014WhitePaper/wiki ).

An explicit acknowledgement, and classification, of the types of OoL and the types of approaches to understanding OoL . Origins of life studies and dialogues often conflate the characteristics of origins events under consideration ( see Framing section above ). This can hinder communication within fields and is problematic for broader cross-disciplinary interactions.

In the introductory section, we suggested the terms Historical, Synthetic, and Universal as a broad classification of approaches to the OoL problem ( Fig. 1 ). Current trends in all three approaches suggest the possibility of life based on a different set of molecular compounds from modern biology. We propose the development of a common language to describe the aims of origins studies, not just in terms of approach but in terms of the “type of life” that is the target of study.

Rather than trying to offer an exhaustive classification scheme, we offer the following tentative glossary of terms regarding the “types of life” considered in OoL studies. This list is suggested as the seed for a common terminology by which the relationships between approaches can be better understood. The terms below are not intended to be mutually exclusive.

Terrestrial/Actual —the OoL as they actually occurred on Earth; that is, the specific chain or sequence of events and mechanisms that led to the last universal common ancestor (LUCA) and early evolution soon after its appearance. Constraining our knowledge of the terrestrial OoL is the primary aim of many, but not all, approaches to the OoL.

Extraterrestrial —the OoL as they may have played out in environments beyond Earth. The life that results might be close to that of Earth or radically different.

Nonstandard composition —we introduce this as a catchall term to refer to life based on molecular components different from the ones we are familiar with in terrestrial biology. This idea has recently been gaining in popularity in both historical and synthetic approaches. See for example the contribution by L. Cronin in the Supplementary Material .

Nonstandard structure —we introduce this term to refer to life based on similar molecular components to extant Earth biology but put together in unfamiliar ways.

Plausible —in the absence of specific knowledge about the actual historical origin of Earth life, we often consider detailed scenarios for how the origin of life might have occurred, constrained by what is known about Earth's geological history and physical chemistry. This has been a common approach throughout much of the field's history.

Reinvented —not all approaches are constrained by plausibility. Instead, some deliberately target processes different from those that occurred on Earth to better understand the universal aspects of biology and its origin.

In silico/Abstract —it is also possible to consider the origin of life in more abstract terms. When computer simulation is the main methodology, this approach is often referred to as in silico . A great deal of work in A-Life is of this form.

While some of these terms are in common use, we draw particular attention to those that are not. “Nonstandard” approaches remain a fertile area for origins research. This is true within historical approaches ( e.g. , Joyce et al. , 1987 ) as well as in more synthetic approaches. The “reinvention” of life in new, nonstandard forms will likely be beneficial to all origins research, insomuch as it demonstrates the wider tool kit with which lifelike systems can be constructed.

An evaluation of the degree of completeness of any eventual OoL theory . If history is any guide, standards for what would count as a complete OoL theory may be unlikely to be determined by scientific consensus in the near term. A more realistic goal is to try to assess the degree of completeness of any particular theory, whether about the OoL on Earth or elsewhere in the Universe.

Even there, it may be difficult to attain consensus. It will always be useful to examine OoL theories in comparison with their historical antecedents to evaluate their degree of completeness and how the evaluation of OoL models changes over time. A scrutiny of the historical development of such models, from a number of disciplinary backgrounds, will help highlight the different ways in which the OoL problem has been framed over time.

A mapping abstraction of OoL . A simple graphical representation of the fundamental trajectories and interactions of OoL pathways can be used as a common tool to summarize concepts and to illuminate where different approaches contribute and face similar challenges ( see Framing section ).

Branches, nodes, and bottlenecks can be related to complexity, information, chemical possibilities, emergent systemic properties, energy/fitness landscapes, and exploration priorities ( e.g. , studies of extraterrestrial solar system environments). A further example is sketched here ( Figure 4 ).

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A conceptual representation of hypothetical pathways from abiotic to living states. An unspecified measure of complexity and/or functionality increases from left to right, and an unspecified measure of the energy or chemical landscape increases bottom to top. Labeled points illustrate various hypothetical situations: (1) A bottleneck—all histories must pass through here for terrestrial OoL—this therefore represents a critical focus for geological study or exploration ( e.g. , Mars), cf. Fig. 2 . (2) An alternate (nonterrestrial/actual) abiotic environment nonetheless leads to an exact match to terrestrial OoL. (3) A terrestrial abiotic landscape eventually leads to a nonterrestrial (alternate) biotic system of lower complexity. (4) A pathway exhibits rapid diversification of preliving systems ( e.g. , molecular structures) although only one leads to an OoL event. (5) A nonterrestrial pathway splits at advanced complexity and leads to a separate OoL event within the same abiotic environment.

However, a consistent terminology is needed to make the best use of abstractions and conceptual representations and to avoid misunderstanding across fields ( e.g. , “speciation” in biology has very different meaning than it does in chemistry). Thus, a cross-disciplinary translation process will be necessary.

Conceptual maps are a way to help express concepts that describe what is likely to be universal about life, as process and operation, from “wet” systems to “dry” A-Life. It may also help identify universal bottlenecks or steps that any terrestrial, plausible, or artificial OoL trajectory must pass through and are therefore strategically important areas of research.

The need for a quantitative scale of living systems . Although it has presently evaded us, it is clear that there is a critical need for a quantitative (even if incomplete) continuous scale or measurement that can be used as a practical tool to evaluate the “aliveness” of any given system.

There are a number of traits that typify life, such as complexity, adaptiveness, and thermodynamic disequilibrium. To develop a scale of “aliveness” will require a proper study of these and perhaps other variables, as well as the concept of “continuity” within these scales as they may apply to life.

Much like biological evolutionary processes in general, the transitions between abiotic and biotic systems or stable and metastable states ( i.e. , states either sensitive to perturbation or that change very slowly) could be smooth and/or discontinuous.

The quantification of complexity is an important challenge since complexity is found at many different levels of biological organization, from subcellular levels up to ecosystems. Any such scale may be refined by experiment and comparison with other proposed scales.

Invoking the triviality or lack thereof of any object may help us frame how life works. Complex, nonliving objects, though made by living systems, could act as useful guides. The sand on a beach is clearly nonliving, but sand fired into a glass with a handle and other features was clearly made by a living system. Furthermore, a working scale could also be applied to evaluate the environments that support living systems.

Practical tools will be required to implement these scales. Various accepted techniques are used to detect, evaluate, and quantify living systems on Earth, and these technologies have already been adapted for use on other planets ( e.g. , Mars). To a large extent, these techniques remain extremely terrestrial biology–centric, and it may be necessary to develop new technologies for life detection for both solar system exploration and for use in the laboratory ( e.g. , wet A-Life). These methods may involve the quantification of differential responses of systems to varying conditions, the detection of novel chemical signals, or both.

A quantitative scale also points toward a need to develop a precise operational definition of life. A bottom-up approach might involve searching for the minimal set of molecules necessary to construct life in vitro . The laboratory study of simple autocatalytic chemical systems (for example, the formose reaction) may offer clues.

The further development of machine-chemistry-algorithm investigations . Effective exploration of OoL scenarios will likely require the use of high-throughput chemical laboratory automation ( e.g. , robotics, microfluidics), so-called “cyber chemistry.”

“Cyber-chemistry” offers new opportunities for exploring OoL landscapes and may strengthen ties between the wet and dry A-Life communities through the study of system dynamics and processes.

There is a need for experiments designed to identify the prebiotic selection of efficient self-reproducing systems instead of individual biomolecules. Cyber-chemistry may offer a method for accomplishing this.

Learning about the robustness of living systems by mimicry . Technology that has become ubiquitous for humans ( e.g. , algorithms linked to real-world robotics or human-interaction systems, from industrial systems to predictive search engines) may capture some properties of living systems ( e.g. , fitness and adaptation, autonomy) that could provide deep insight to emergence and complexity in OoL scenarios.

We should consider the application of these interactive technologies (and examine their inadvertent application, e.g. , the propagation of information and behavior via social media) to mimic living systems. This may represent a unique opportunity to identify signposts toward the abstraction of organisms.

Long-term experiments . The community should identify existing long-term experiments or potential experiments ( e.g. , those spanning decades, centuries, or longer that are intentional or unintentional) and actively encourage the performance of new ones.

The challenge of studying OoL mechanisms that are potentially very slow, or of very low probability, has not been addressed in proper detail. This may be a serious problem for studying the OoL and is worthy of attention.

Organized competitions as drivers of discovery and community . Origins of life research should seek innovative and disruptive approaches to theory, experiment, and exploration that can serve to pull together traditionally isolated communities. Barriers to overcome include those of basic terminology and conceptual differences, even though common phenomena are under discussion.

Competitions, along the lines of competitions already held for artificial intelligence research ( e.g. , the Turing Prize), autonomous vehicles ( e.g., the DARPA Grand Challenge), space exploration ( e.g. , the X-Prize), and the like, could be useful for making progress in understanding the OoL—both in terms of channeling science activities and in terms of building community. Establishing safety protocols ( e.g. , techniques to isolate successful, invasive living systems from the current natural or in silico environment) would be advisable and also a useful community exercise.

Specific suggestions include a challenge to bring the most “alive” system to the table, preferably via a multidisciplinary team effort, for example, by melding chemistry, A-Life, and robotics. Another concrete example could be a competition in the CRitical Assessment of Artificial Cellularity (CRAAC). The purpose of this would be for teams to enter their best “artificial cell.”

ELSI/EON can be a critical safe harbor . Research into the OoL appears to have reached a critical juncture, where it can flourish with greater integration into the broader scientific community and even play a leadership role. But to do so it needs help that augments long-standing efforts by (for example) ISSOL and other groups.

The Earth-Life Science Institute and EON can, and should, serve as “safe harbors” for scientists and projects in OoL that have traditionally remained on the periphery of many disciplines or have struggled for resources to make progress. Encouragement is needed to get people to move from established fields to carry out OoL research.

The field of astrobiology already overlaps greatly with a number of OoL areas ( e.g. , early Earth, chemical systems in extreme environments, exploration, and the search for life), and many researchers are active in both the astrobiology and OoL communities and linked through, for example, NASA's support and interests in astrobiology. This is a connection that can be reinforced.

The Earth-Life Science Institute represents an unprecedented network of disciplines and a pool of expertise to draw on in a single institution—spanning earth sciences, chemistry, biology, astronomy, and computation. Structuring a set of OoL science modules in an open systems science approach (a group of parts creating a growing, renewing whole) will help advance the field. Support for ELSI beyond its initial 10-year period will be critical.

The need to build dialogue between various subcommunities . The origin of life is a problem that is studied by scientists working in a wide variety of fields. These communities differ not only in the types of questions they ask but also in what is taken to constitute an answer. Communication between such different perspectives can be difficult, but the origin of life is a problem that requires precisely this.

Questions raised at the workshop ranged from “what was the composition of the primitive atmosphere?” to “how can we formalize the notion of agency?” These questions might seem so different that there is little hope that either could be of any use in answering the other. Yet each question in its own way is motivated by a desire to know how biology can arise from nonbiology, and each in its way requires an answer if the origin of life on Earth is to be fully understood. Other questions, such as those addressing the emergence of metabolic networks, are asked by multiple fields but approached in such different ways as to seem incompatible.

Perhaps the greatest such divide is between theorists and experimentalists, across all disciplines. We believe that a great deal of progress can be made by training a new generation of theorists in OoL to work in tandem with experimentalists. This may result both in the generation of new theories that are more tightly constrained by empirical knowledge and in a greater sense of direction for experimental work.

Another important gap, which could easily be closed, is that between A-Life (or rather, the small subset of it that is concerned with the OoL) and the “traditional” OoL community. A-Life has traditionally been concerned with understanding life and its origins at the organism level rather than the biochemical level. An increase in cross-pollination of both ideas and questions could greatly benefit both the A-Life and OoL communities. ELSI/EON is in a good position to facilitate this by bringing members of both communities together and starting this dialogue.

There is a consensus that a full review of the work that A-Life has contributed to the OoL problem would be a positive contribution to this process of community dialogue. How this is initiated is, however, an open question.

Increasing communication between more traditional disciplines (chemistry, biology, biochemistry, mathematics, physics) on the particular topic of the OoL is also a priority.

In concert, attention needs to be paid to ensuring open access to data and data management, to constructing sophisticated metrics of community and group progress, and to understanding the history of the field and developing the philosophy of the field.

Investigations targeting OoL-planetary-cosmos connections . There is a need for continued and expanded investigation of the specifics of the nature of the early Earth environment, and for solar system and exoplanetary exploration in the context of the OoL, which are largely driven by notions derived from terrestrial/historical OoL science.

Important examples include the nature of Hadean Earth's (or Noachian Mars') atmospheric and oceanic chemistry, and the existence and partitioning of wet and dry environments in relation to organic compound synthesis, concentration, and reaction. These investigations should include the study of niche environments where unusual chemical and physical processes of potential importance for the OoL may have occurred.

As observational technology improves, exoplanets present an opportunity to study young terrestrial worlds as proxies for young Earth, both in terms of climate states and atmospheric chemistries. Other solar system bodies, for example Titan, Europa, and Enceladus, could also provide important observational data about chemical evolution.

Despite decades of study, a complete understanding of organics in meteorites and their role on Hadean Earth is still lacking, but critical. Equally, there is a need to understand how simple monomers can lead to more complex molecules in a variety of solar system settings and cosmic radiation environments ( e.g. , interstellar space, comets, icy moons).

Metabolic pathways, energy, and biology . The investigation of metabolic pathways and their history before LUCA and before enzymes should be pursued.

What were the first energy sources (disequilibria) for life, and how were they used? Earth is a type of environment with many exploitable energy sources, and it may have been that early life was using one of the same sources that we can find life using today. It is important to continue to identify and enumerate sources of energy that are used by modern biological systems so that we understand how life works today. Mechanistic information on the use of energy sources is extremely helpful and may provide insight to OoL properties. Alternative energy sources, redox couples, and mechanistic pathways for their utilization should be investigated as possibilities both today and in the past.

What were the mechanisms of energy conservation (conversion) used by early life to organize material through the dissipation of disequilibria? Today, three mechanisms of energy conservation are recognized, which allow coupling of chemical reactions to metabolic “work.” They are (1) substrate-level phosphorylation, (2) charge separation across a membrane with ion pumps (aka, chemiosmosis), and (3) electron pair bifurcation.

An immediate challenge is to identify which of these mechanisms were operative early on and which may not have been. Each of these three are somewhat troubling in their own unique ways. For example, substrate-level phosphorylation allows only “direct” exchange of chemical energy and likely cannot function in low-energy environments since it cannot function in “ratchet” form. And while it is widely thought that chemiosmosis was present in the last common ancestor—since the ATP-ase enzymes that work with ion-spanning electronic potentials are found in all domains of life—the presence of a successful metabolic strategy should not be taken as proof of deep history, especially in light of the apparent ease by which genes can be horizontally transferred between organisms. It is possible that none of these three known mechanisms of energy conservation were operative at the OoL; an in-depth assessment of this claim needs to be made, and possible alternatives suggested.

Other basics yet to be addressed include the following: How stable were the first biomolecules, and in what fraction of contemporary values were these first biomolecules present? How did the first organisms accommodate the continual refreshment of unstable molecules within their metabolisms? From an ecological perspective, were early organisms inefficient (requiring large amounts of substrate to survive) or perhaps drastically different? Asked in another way, did the OoL occur in an environment with abundant nutrients and energy where life could exist and evolve in a “wasteful” state, or were the first organisms very efficient and able to make a living in very low energy regimes, perhaps with restricted access to nutrients?

At what level can we begin to generalize about the constitution and organization of a cell? Current biology is revealing that, even within a collection of clonal (genetically identical) microbial cells, each cell has the potential to exist in a different state of gene expression and metabolic state.

Each cell is a unique expression of the potentiality of that organismal type. As measurements become better, some average- (population-) level measurements may need to be replaced or at least amended with data from single-cell measurements.

In what ways can OoL researchers generalize biological properties? At the level of populations or among individuals? And in what ways can OoL researchers conduct measurements on individuals within a population in a manner that would allow the identification of possibly successful cellular states, metabolic, and evolutionary trajectories (compare with Fig. 4 )?

Progress may be made through the study of modern environments that are potential analogues of the Archean, for example, hot springs. In addition, a major goal will be laboratory studies that aim to define plausible sets of early catalysts. These catalysts may have been operative to enable otherwise very slow chemical reactions. Determining how these catalysts may function as energy converters, facilitating something similar to the energy conservation pathways we find in extant biology, may be instructive.

Finally, simply learning more about contemporary biology and its operation has the potential to substantially revise thinking of the bioenergetics operative at the OoL. In the same way that a review of A-Life contributions to the OoL problem would be valuable, biological scientists should be encouraged to condense and articulate knowledge of contemporary biological metabolisms and mechanisms for the benefit of, and utilization by, researchers outside the field.

Making life in the laboratory . This remains a critical challenge as part of the three approaches to the OoL—historical, synthetic, and universal. We assume that it is possible to make life artificially, but it is only recently that studies have begun to appear that explicitly works toward this goal. It is difficult to assess how much progress has been made. The source of the difficulty in achieving this synthesis is the subject of considerable, and considerably contradictory, speculation.

It is possible that our search strategies for detecting the spontaneous development of lifelike processes are hampered by conceptual and analytical impediments. The classic Miller-Urey experiment demonstrated the production of potential building blocks for terrestrial biology, but after ∼60 years it remains unclear how the types of small organic compounds such experiments provide self-assemble, or can be assembled, into living systems.

Historically, efforts to understand the OoL have centered on reactions and compounds that operate in modern biology rather than undirected “coaxing” of systems toward a living state, or analysis of complex mixtures for lifelike processes. This is likely to change in the near future.

Guiding the next generation of OoL scientists . A useful way to bring focus to the question of which areas are of near-term importance for the OoL is to consider what we (individually or as a community) would recommend the next generation of students of OoL science study.

It is strongly suggested that the outcomes of this workshop be used to populate an online resource as a first step in this direction.

The above set of statements and aspirational goals for OoL research also represent a good set of guidelines for the activities of EON over the next 3 years.

In particular, it is clear that EON can play a key role in this field by supporting a number of specific areas that have been identified for improving and advancing OoL science:

• EON should seek ways to encourage and facilitate communication and collaboration between the fields of A-Life ( i.e. , theoretical, computational, and robotics work on living systems) and chemical and biological approaches to the OoL, integrated with the research focus of Earth and solar system exploration communities.
• EON should work toward ensuring that ELSI supports multidisciplinary research into the OoL.
• EON should seek the means to encourage and enable innovative and high-profile efforts to produce breakthroughs in OoL studies. Examples may include the organization of “X-Prize”-style competitions that can help build interdisciplinary collaboration and attract new ideas and funding sources to OoL science.
• EON should host an online hub of OoL resources, including review material and a “living” repository of source material and data.
• EON should aspire to provide the field with quantitative evidence for the necessity and efficacy of OoL research ( e.g. , the outcomes of cross-disciplinary interaction, open-access data). This resource can be used to encourage funding sources to support OoL research.

The NASA Astrobiology Roadmap (Des Marais et al. 2003 , 2008 ) and the forthcoming NASA Astrobiology Strategy document (2015) are exemplars of collective opinion, balance, and scientific detail. As such, these have served, and will continue to serve, as invaluable reference points and guides for NASA and NASA-supported communities as well as all other investigative efforts into the nature of life in the Universe. The European AstRoMap consultation project (Horneck et al. , 2015 ) also represents a very significant portion of the landscape of astrobiology research and aspirations.

There are major overlaps between the overarching goals of finding evidence for extraterrestrial life and understanding the mechanisms of life's origins on Earth or elsewhere. Additionally, seeking Earth-analog exoplanets offers the very real prospect of obtaining data proxies to address questions about the geochemical and thermodynamical state of early Earth and the OoL.

The present document should be read as a complementary reference to the NASA and AstRoMap astrobiology documents, one that does not represent consensus opinion, but an effort to capture a number of critical issues and proposals for making progress in understanding the OoL. In particular, we have given ourselves the freedom to present opinions and positions on the ways in which OoL research communities might better work together and to present high-level conceptual statements on the nature of understanding the OoL.

The Earth-Life Science Institute at the Tokyo Institute of Technology was launched in December 2012 as part of the World Premier International Research Center Initiative (WPI) of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). The WPI grant is awarded to institutes with a research and administrative vision to become globally competitive centers that can attract the best scientists from around the world to Japan.

The Earth-Life Science Institute's research mission is to elucidate how Earth formed and how its early environment allowed for the origin of life and its subsequent evolution. What distinguishes ELSI from other institutes studying the OoL is its emphasis on placing the study in the specific context of early Earth.

The ELSI Origins Network (EON) was created to form a global interdisciplinary network, centered at ELSI, for research into the OoL. Its goal is to bring together existing ideas from different sciences to shape each other's development and create a collaborative research community with global vision, which can recognize and ask the next generation of questions. EON is designed to support ELSI's goal to be a worldwide destination for leading-edge research in all aspects of the OoL and to internationalize research and higher education in Japan. EON is funded by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation.

Appendix II

Summary of responses to a questionnaire sent to workshop participants prior to meeting, which are separated into broad topical areas. Participants were asked to provide examples of the questions or topics they considered most interesting, urgent, and important for OoL science in the near and mid term.

Early Earth environments, planets (solar system), exoplanets

• What was the chronology of OoL events on early Earth?
• What were the couplings between the planetary chemical/thermodynamic environment and OoL factors such as early metabolism?
• How does the emergence of key chemical systems take place from disordered states?
• How can OoL hypotheses be constrained with geological/astronomical data?
• Are there habitable environments beyond Earth?
• Is there life beyond Earth?
• Is life a universal phenomenon?

OoL science “social engineering”

• Local and global fragmentation of OoL science is an exceptional challenge, needing harmonization and synthesis.
• Recognition of the need for common dialogue and a cooperative community—enabling that communication in an environment of limited institutional support.
• Can we identify broad questions that can be answered independently of each other and hypotheses that can be tested independently from detailed scenarios?
• What is the common framework for chemical specifics to inform/be informed by dynamical generalities?
• Is there a way to combine the many proposed/studied reaction networks in models and experiments to test their compatibility and relation to hypotheses?

RNA specifics

• What are the links between RNA and the geophysics/geochemistry of Early Earth?
• How does proto-metabolism (abiotic autocatalytic cycles) connect to the putative RNA world?
• Is there empirical evidence for a diversity of abiotic autocatalytic cycles other than, for example, the classic formose reaction?
• Were the OoL the result of selection within a vast chemo-diversity?
• Were the OoL the result of exploration of a chemical landscape of relatively few “correct” components?
• What is the functional integration between compartments ( e.g. , lipid vesicles), RNA polymers, and small sets of reactive molecules?
• What is the path for prebiotic RNA monomer synthesis? Is there one?

Building life

• Can we make new life (synthetic or artificial) and replace the OoL with A-Life and design a roadmap to then solve the OoL?
• Can we quantify “aliveness”?
• Can we create minimal RNA life in the laboratory?
• Can A-Life escape the limitations of terrestrial biology?
• Can we reconstruct subsets of living states?
• Can we select and characterize a replicase composed of alternate biopolymers and test their fitness?
• Is it possible to build semisynthetic organisms with nonstandard DNA?
• Can we build an automated system to explore chemical inheritance and variation?

Prebiotics, precursors, early bioenergetics

• How can we improve current dogma regarding prebiotic plausibility and defining life?
• How does life's information-carrying system emerge?
• Is it possible to identify realistic autocatalytic cycles and systems of cooperation between metabolism, “genes,” and compartments?
• Can we develop with precision knowledge of early Earth conditions and organic matter sources and availability?
• How were critical metabolisms autochthonously generated/organized on Hadean Earth?
• How did chemistry go from order to chaos, and how do we model this?
• How can we perform exhaustive characterization of common minerals as prebiotic catalysts?
• Were the first energy transducers (ion pumps, electron bifurcation, phosphorylation complexes) different than today's, or was there preexisting functionality?
• Are there other ways to harness environmental chemical potentials?
• Are there simple ways to couple molecular organization to dissipation of chemical potentials?

Big thinking and evolution

• Is life inevitable? Which properties are universal?
• What is the role of death and extinction in emergence of life?
• Are there new ways to characterize stages of life's history as information storage, processing, and transmission?
• How is the level of organization related to selection and evolutionary dynamics?
• Were cognition and consciousness inevitable?

Supplementary Materials

Supplementary materials can be found at http://eon.elsi.jp/solr-whitepaper-sm/

• Insights 1: Perspectives
• Insights 2: Chemistry & Origins
• Insights 3: Experiment & Observation
• Insights 4: Evolution, Complexity & Computation

Abbreviations Used

Acknowledgments.

The authors wish to thank the Earth-Life Science Institute for hosting the meeting which this publication is based. This project/publication was supported by the ELSI Origins Network (EON), which is supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation. Parts of this work were carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology.

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Chemical origin of life articles from across Nature Portfolio

The chemical origin of life refers to the conditions that might have existed and therefore promoted the first replicating life forms. It considers the physical and chemical reactions that could have led to early replicator molecules.

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Synthesis, structural, molecular docking, and in vitro biological activities of Cu-doped ZnO nanomaterials

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Heat flows enrich prebiotic building blocks and enhance their reactivity

Heat flows through thin, crack-like geo-compartments are shown to purify previously mixed compounds and enhance their reactivity, providing a selective mechanism for separating molecules relevant to the chemical origins of life.

Thomas Matreux
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Primitive purine biosynthesis connects ancient geochemistry to modern metabolism

Constructing a biosphere-scale model of the evolutionary history of metabolism based on >12,000 biochemical reactions, the authors show that a bottleneck in purine synthesis prevents metabolic expansion from geochemical precursors.

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Symmetry breaking and chiral amplification in prebiotic ligation reactions

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Cosmic dust fertilization of glacial prebiotic chemistry on early Earth

According to astrophysical and geological models, cosmic dust rich in bioessential elements could have accumulated on the surface of early Earth in arid environments (such as glaciers), potentially helping to foster the chemical origins of life.

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Unravelling the origins of life: digging deeper

Introduction

This is the second article of our two-part series on historical developments and contemporary research advances in the field of origin of life. In this series’ first article , we provided a broad overview of the questions within the origin of life research, using a historical perspective. We also outlined briefly how inputs, directions and methods from multiple disciplines such as geology, chemistry, and mathematics have been critical in shaping the development of this field. The previous article also described how different theories and hypotheses have been developed over the years for deciphering the origin of life on earth and outlined the need for bridging the gaps between the two major schools of thought in the field: the gene-first and the metabolism-first hypotheses.

In this article, we delve deeper into some of the specific approaches being employed for improving our understanding of the origins of life. We also explore why solving the origin of life problem inevitably requires inputs from a diversity of fields and approaches. In particular, we focus on the research efforts of one such collaborative and interdisciplinary group of scientists working at NCBS Bangalore , University of Delhi and ESPCI Paris , and how they have been collectively studying autocatalysis as a mechanism, which served as a n essential pre-requisite for the emergence of complex biomolecules necessary for life.

Need for an interdisciplinary approach

Understanding how the phenomenon of life originated on earth has been one of the most fundamental questions that continue to evade scientists to date. Different experts from a range of disciplines have approached this problem but have met with limited success. Not surprisingly, the need for using a diversity of disciplinary insights and approaches for unravelling such a phenomenon has become increasingly obvious over the years.

Research on the origins of life is heavily dependent on insights from various disciplines, including chemistry, biology, geology, physics, and mathematics to name just a few. “ Not only do you need different types of experimentalists, but you also need different types of theorists to work together. And this is a big challenge for the field to manage to bring all those people with a different culture ”, explains Dr Philippe Nghe, a researcher at ESPCI Paris who is part of one such collaborative team working to solve this problem.

Each of these diverse disciplines brings unique perspectives and provides different approaches for moving towards a better understanding of the subject. For instance, inputs from geologists help better gauge the geological conditions of early Earth, including its atmospheric makeup and mineral composition, and also help decode a diversity of historical evidence collected from fossils such as stromatolites. Similarly, inputs from biochemistry offer a better understanding of biomolecules such as DNA, RNA, proteins and lipids, and how interactions between them could have led to the emergence of life on Earth.

In addition to such experimental fields of study, insights and contributions from theoretical fields like mathematical modelling and computational biology have also proven to be critical to our understanding of the origin of life and will continue to play an important role going forward. Adopting such an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach also allows more diverse perspectives, data and methodologies to come together in unique ways to shed light on specific aspects of the origin of life on Earth.

One such interdisciplinary team of scientists at NCBS, DU and ESPCI Paris have been collaborating for several years to collectively explore the mechanisms and roles of RNA-based autocatalytic systems in enabling the origin of life. Before we explore this collaborative research project in greater detail, let us first understand a little bit about the theory of Autocatalytic Sets (ACS).

Understanding autocatalytic sets

A catalyst is a substance/molecule that does not get used in the reaction itself but speeds up the reactions between these molecules. Autocatalytic sets (ACS) are collections of such catalytic molecules and chemical reactions capable of producing the entire set collectively. In an autocatalytic set, every member is the product of at least one reaction catalysed by at least one other member of the set. This property allows them to be closed and self-sustaining systems, since every member of the ACS can be produced internally. An ACS is either capable of generating its own food molecules or is dependent on food molecules that are readily available in the environment. This property of self-reproduction is a critical feature exhibited by all living systems.

A simple example of such an ACS in terms of a chemical system would be a set containing two species of chemicals that catalyse each other’s production. Consider the reactions in Figure 1. below. Here P catalyses the production of Q and Q catalyses the production of P. Such a set can be represented as a two-cycle (as shown in the figure below) where the direction of the arrow indicates which species is catalysing which species. P and Q together form an autocatalytic set. As a result of this, both P and Q sustain each other’s production giving rise to the property of self-reproduction.

Figure 1 : An example of a simple autocatalytic set, where A, B, C and D are the reactants that have been assumed to be available in unlimited supply, while P and Q are the products that are constantly being catalysed by each other.

On a similar note, a cell can be considered a highly complex autocatalytic system capable of self-reproduction. For example, a simple bacterium grows by converting food from the environment and is able to make more copies of itself. It achieves that by doubling each and every component that it is composed of and then dividing it into two daughter bacteria.

This is similar to how a terrarium also works, which is a miniature garden system fully sealed within a closed glass container, which includes plants, water as well as gases. These plants use the water to grow and also create moisture that restores the water in the terrarium. The gases, oxygen and carbon dioxide, are also balanced in this system due to the processes of respiration and photosynthesis occurring in these plants. All of these cyclical processes make the terrarium self-sustaining and self-sufficient.

In 1971, Stuart Kauffman, Manfred Eigen, and Otto Rössler were the first to independently introduce the concept of autocatalytic sets to the origin of life problem. In particular, Kauffman used theoretical arguments supported by computational modelling to show that it was possible for autocatalytic sets of proteins to emerge in early earth conditions. While there have been several theoretical studies of autocatalytic systems over the years, experimental approaches have only gained prominence in the last few decades. Such experimental approaches can enable the building of different model systems for studying the role of lipid-based, DNA-based, and peptide-based autocatalytic chemistries in the origin of life.

Overall, the theory of ACS provides us with a way to think about how chemicals on the early earth could have been possibly organised before becoming complex enough to produce life. However, it is not immediately clear if ACS has the ability to evolve. Over the years, this has fuelled several heated debates questioning whether ACS are actually capable of undergoing Darwinian evolution and increasing in complexity to an extent that can give rise to early lifeforms.

While, e xperimental studies of ACS have successfully demonstrated self-reproduction, other funda-mental properties of Darwinian evolution such as variation, heredity and selection have received minimal attention from researchers so far. In this context, a recent review by Ameta et al. (2021) elucidates the various advances and challenges of demonstrating Darwinian evolution in autocatalytic chemical systems.

Further, the collaborative group at NCBS Bangalore, the University of Delhi and ESPCI Paris are investigating an experimental autocatalytic chemical system for better understanding properties like self-reproduction, heredity and variation, which are required to explain Darwinian evolution. In the next section, we will dive deeper into this collaborative group’s efforts to study the Darwinian evolution of autocatalytic chemical networks.

Collaborative efforts at NCBS, DU and ESPCI

This collaborative research effort is being carried out at National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Delhi University (DU) and École supérieure de physique et de chimie industrielles de la Ville de Paris (ESPCI). The group at NCBS includes Dr. Sandeep Ameta, Nayan Chakraborty on the experimental front, who are working with Dr. Shashi Thutupalli , while Dr. Yoshiya Matsubara is studying the theoretical aspects of the project along with Dr. Sandeep Krishna and Dr. Shashi Thutupalli. At DU, Angad Yuvraj Singh is studying the theory of autocatalytic chemical dynamics under the supervision of Dr. Sanjay Jain . And at ESPCI, Dr. Cyrille Jeancolas and Camille Lambert are using both experimental and modelling-based approaches to study the Azoarcus system under the supervision of Dr. Philippe Nghe .

Here, Azoarcus refers to a nitrogen-fixing bacteria, where one of its self-splicing introns also functions as an RNA enzyme (aka ribozyme). The collaborative group at NCBS, DU and ESPCI also uses a model system based on one such ribozyme that is roughly 200 nucleotides long. It was first studied by Hayden and Lehman in 2006, where they demonstrated that it could self-assemble through reactions between smaller fragments in an autocatalytic manner. Later studies also introduced mutations in the sequence of the Azoarcus ribozyme that were manipulated to form autocatalytic reaction networks exhibiting collective reproduction properties.

This Azoarcus RNA model system is now being studied by the collaborative group to demonstrate the evolvability of such autocatalytic networks. One experimental setup to demonstrate evolvability is a serial dilution protocol, wherein a small fraction of the RNA networks are transferred (called seeding) from one reaction pot to another having fresh food mixtures. This process generates RNA populations in each reaction mixture (called generations), which are further analysed through genetic sequencing. One of the characteristics of evolution, heredity, can be observed when seeding the same food mixture with two different networks leads to the generation of two different RNA populations. In such cases, the observation of heredity here can be attributed to the autocatalytic nature of these reactions.

The collaborative group is also investigating other aspects of the evolvability of such RNA autocatalytic networks. They begin by mutating the model system to generate a pool of ribozyme variants. These mutant ribozymes are then subjected to various kinds of selection pressures such as serial dilutions and temperature fluctuations and then analysed through genetic sequencing. In a separate experimental setup, these ribozymes are compartmentalised inside coacervates to study ribozyme reproduction, and eventually their growth and division.

Overall, the team aims to theoretically understand, experimentally demonstrate and computationally model the occurrence of Darwinian Evolution within such autocatalytic sets. One of their key objectives is to demonstrate the very first functional ACS-protocells, i.e. compartmentalised autocatalytic self-reproducing systems with heritable variations exhibiting selection (also called, differential fitness).

“ When you talk about Darwinian evolution, not only [do] you need all those properties, but you also need them to work together properly ”, explains Philippe. Demonstrating this experimentally could perhaps be the very first documented evidence of a protocell undergoing Darwinian evolution, and thereby the first demonstration of life in the lab.

The collaborative group also continues to push the boundaries of what is known about the origin of life on earth in smaller sub-groups. For instance, Sandeep Krishna and Yoshiya Matsubara are together working on theoretical aspects and modelling of heredity in autocatalytic systems.

Explaining the need for theory and modelling in such efforts, Yoshiya explains that “ as theorists, we are focused on developing kinetic models of autocatalytic chemical systems (ACSs). Through these models, we try to identify the necessary conditions, such as properties of chemical systems and experimental protocols, for the emergence of self-reproducing and evolvable ACSs. This will not only help experimentalists in demonstrating Darwinian evolution in the laboratory but also could contribute to making the debate on the origins of life scenarios, like the metabolism-first or gene-first scenario, more quantitative and concrete, and thereby lead to a better understanding of chemical evolution process. "

Moreover, using the Azoarcus RNA system, Sandeep Ameta has been experimentally investigating several aspects of variation and heredity in vitro . Shashi Thutupalli and Nayan Chakraborty are investigating the dynamics of ACS in compartments. Further, Philippe Nghe and his group are now investigating ways to identify autocatalysis in a system of diverse chemistries, and particularly developing ways to discover and engineer novel autocatalytic systems. Sanjay Jain and Angad Yuvraj are working on alternate mechanisms to achieve evolution in autocatalytic chemical systems.

Figure 4: The team of researchers across NCBS, DU and ESPCI collaboratively working on origin of life research

Our article demonstrates how interdisciplinary collaborations can seamlessly blend insights from theoretical and experimental fields to provide us with a deeper understanding of the origin of life.

Specifically, systems containing ACS provide us with a framework to understand the prebiotic origins and evolution of the first living cells. Moreover, interdisciplinary investigations in fields such as astrobiology can also shed light on alternate chemistries capable of sustaining life on other planets.

“I think we're at the point where a spurt of "growth" will happen in our understanding. This is mainly due to the new experimental systems that people are now studying, ranging from "messy chemistries" to multiple schemes for autocatalysis, to new mechanisms that generate a diversity of RNA or DNA sequences” , explains Sandeep Krishna.

Despite all the recent advances in our understanding of the processes involved in the functioning of living systems, their biochemistry, morphology, and metabolism, we still lack an understanding of the design principles behind these processes and the underlying phenomena that have given rise to their universality across all organisms.

Some of the most fundamental questions that remain unanswered today include the open-ended evolution of chemical systems, the origin of genetic code, the rise of multicellularity, as well as the emergence of complex traits in living systems such as brain development (cephalization) and cognition. Sandeep Ameta further adds that it’s really crucial to question if “ we understand the design principles enough to be able to build synthetic chemical systems with life-like properties ”.

We are still far away from conclusively answering fundamental questions about living systems and most of these questions redirect us to the question of “How did life originate?”. Using interdisciplinary and multi-team collaborative efforts (such as that at NCBS-DU-ESPCI) is perhaps the only way to arrive at a holistic understanding of life’s origins.

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EU should adopt research-based approach to ensure quality, safety of substances of human origin, argues study

by University of Toronto

Substances of human origin (SoHOs) such as blood, plasma, skin, corneas, and embryos play an increasing role in life-saving medical procedures. Governments around the world are reevaluating their health care policies to ensure of a supply of SoHOs for their population, while also considering the best-interests of both donors and patients.

A paper published in BMJ Global Health examines the issues surrounding the regulation of SoHOs for governments, after the Council of the European Union (EU) and the European Parliament agreed in December 2023 on a new "Regulation on standards of quality and safety for substances of human origin intended for human application."

The paper, coauthored by Professor Nicola Lacetera of the University of Toronto, urges that it is imperative for the EU to adopt a balanced, empirically sound, and research-backed approach which promotes policies to safeguard the interests of donors and patients, while ensuring a safe supply of SoHOs.

"Recent studies and reviews of the evidence over the last 40 years have concluded that the statistically sound, field-based evidence from large, representative samples shows that properly devised rewards increase supply without compromising the quality and safety of blood and blood components," says Prof. Lacetera.

"At least where plasma for fractionation is concerned, the unpaid- donor system has failed to meet demand. In Europe, countries allowing monetary compensation for donors are the only ones achieving self-sufficiency in plasma collection for the production of immunoglobulin."

The paper concludes that the final objective of any new regulation should not merely be self-sufficiency in providing SoHOs for treatment, but ensuring the availability of safe, sufficient, and accessible SoHOs for all in need.

One of the more controversial aspects in the discussion has been the compensation of donors, with the new EU regulation stating that the "donation of SoHO should be voluntary and unpaid." Current scientific evidence shows that compensation increases supply without affecting the quality of the products. Without stronger individual incentives for donors and other strategies to reduce barriers to donate such as building additional collective centers, it is unlikely that the EU can achieve self-sufficiency .

The paper has implications for other jurisdictions that are currently reviewing their policies on the donation and use of substances of human origin, including Canada, where the debate as to whether allow compensation to plasma donors is longstanding.

Lacetera is a professor of strategic management at the University of Toronto Mississauga with a cross-appointment to the Rotman School of Management. His co-authors of the paper are Prof. Julio Elias of Universidad del CEMA, Prof. Mario Macis of Johns Hopkins University, Prof. Axel Ockenfeis of the University of Cologne and Max Plank Institute for Research on Collective Goods and Prof. Alvin Roth of Stanford University.

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Marine plankton behavior could predict future marine extinctions

Marine communities migrated to Antarctica during the Earth's warmest period in 66 million years long before a mass-extinction event.

All but the most specialist sea plankton moved to higher latitudes during the Early Eocene Climatic Optimum, an interval of sustained high global temperatures equivalent to worst case global warming scenarios.

When the team, comprised of researchers from the University of Bristol, Harvard University, University of Texas Institute for Geophysics and the University of Victoria, compared biodiversity and global community structure, they found that the community often responds to climate change millions of years before losses of biodiversity.

The study, published today in Nature , suggests that plankton migrated to cooler regions to escape the tropical heat and that only the most highly specialised species were able to remain.

These findings imply that changes on the community scale will be evident long before extinctions in the modern world and that more effort must be placed on monitoring the structure of marine communities to potentially predict future marine extinctions.

Dr Adam Woodhouse from the University of Bristol's School of Earth Sciences, explained: "Considering three billion people live in the tropics, this is not great news.

"We knew that biodiversity amongst marine plankton groups has changed throughout the last 66 million years, but no one had ever explored it on a global, spatial, scale through the lens of a single database.

"We used the Triton dataset, that I created during my PhD, which offered new insights into how biodiversity responds spatially to global changes in climate, especially during intervals of global warmth which are relevant to future warming projections."

Dr Woodhouse teamed up with Dr Anshuman Swain, an ecologist and specialist in the application of networks to biological data. They applied networks to micropalaeontology for the first time ever to document the global spatial changes in community structure as climate has evolved over the Cenozoic, building on previous research on cooling restructured global marine plankton communities.

Dr Woodhouse continued: "The fossil record of marine plankton is the most complete and extensive archive of ancient biological changes available to science. By applying advanced computational analyses to this archive we were able to detail global community structure of the oceans since the death of the dinosaurs, revealing that community change often precedes the extinction of organisms.

"This exciting result suggests that monitoring of ocean community structure may represent an 'early warning system' which precedes the extinction of oceanic life."

Now the team plan to apply similar methods to other marine plankton groups. This study has only worked on the planktonic foraminifera, however there are many other microfossil groups which have important roles in marine food webs which need to be studied. They also need to use the patterns they've observed in the past and present to model future community structure using new climate models.

Marine Biology
Early Climate
Origin of Life
Permian-Triassic extinction event
Extinction event
Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event
Ichthyosaur
Tyrannosaurus

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Materials provided by University of Bristol . Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference :

Anshuman Swain, Adam Woodhouse, William F. Fagan, Andrew J. Fraass, Christopher M. Lowery. Biogeographic response of marine plankton to Cenozoic environmental changes . Nature , 2024; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07337-9

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20 of the Biggest Scientific Mysteries Around the World

Posted: April 20, 2024 | Last updated: April 20, 2024

<p>Approximately 71% of the Earth’s surface is covered by water, primarily in the form of oceans, as confirmed by the <a href="https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/distribution-water-and-above-earth#:~:text=About%2071%20percent%20of%20the,in%20you%20and%20your%20dog.">USGS</a>. Because we are land-based animals who often think of our planet in terms of countries we can live in or visit, many people fail to comprehend that these patches of land are really the ‘solid’ minority in a very watery world.</p>

When it comes to science, not everything has a definite answer and there are still many things we need to research as a human race. Even if we do, there are chances we’ll never find answers to life’s biggest mysteries. Here are 20 of the biggest scientific mysteries.

<p><span>This timeless philosophical inquiry evokes a multitude of interpretations ranging from perspectives to those rooted in spirituality or personal fulfillment. Meaning, in life as defined by researchers mentioned on this </span><a href="https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/three_ways_to_see_meaning_in_your_life#:~:text=Researchers'%20definitions%20of%20meaning%20in,are%20actively%20pursuing%20fulfilling%20goals."><span>Greater Good Magazine</span></a><span> website, generally encompasses three aspects. Firstly, it involves the conviction that your existence and the things you do hold significance, for both yourself and others. Secondly, it entails a sense of coherence, where your life feels meaningful and comprehensible. Lastly, it entails striving toward fulfilling objectives. </span></p>

Origin of Life

There are many challenges when it comes to understanding how life began because not everyone agrees on the same theory. This is supported by UChicago News , which writes, “Various answers have been proposed, all of which remain unverified.” These theories include the conditions on Earth at the beginning of time and space.

<p><span>Despite 68% of the universe being dark energy and 27% being dark matter, we know virtually nothing about them. </span><a href="https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/what-is-dark-energy/"><span>Nasa</span></a><span> admits, “We know how much dark energy there is because we know how it affects the universe’s expansion. Other than that, it is a complete mystery.” </span></p>

Dark Matter Identity

Many scientists have observed unaccounted gravity in space. There are many difficulties that come with detecting these dark matter particles and this has caused conflicting results. Astronomical scientists are still searching for dark matter, but mixed results mean it may always be a mystery.

<p>Isaiah 40:22 refers to the “circle of the earth,” which many interpret as a reference to the earth being spherical, a concept not widely accepted until much later in history. Such ancient texts seemed to resonate with what we now accept as true.</p>

Dark Energy and Cosmic Acceleration

Dark energy is causing the universe to expand at increasing rates. There’s a theoretical concept that cosmic acceleration is needed to keep the universe in static equilibrium. There have been discrepancies in the strength of dark energy predictions, which is why they’re still hard to figure out.

<p>This job involves solving environmental problems and commonly involves a lot of field work. It’s a heavily researched role, which can mean minimal interaction with others, so it’s perfect if you’re an introvert. You’ll need a degree in environmental science or a related field.</p>

Measurement of Evidence

Many problems arise with how significant certain statistics are in scientific research. This has led to paradoxes in data interpretation, and with scientists interpreting statistics differently, it makes it hard to come up with any definite answers. It can be hard for scientists to agree on findings, which means we don’t get answers.

<p>Prostate health has become a sensitive issue for aging men, with concerns ranging from benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) to prostate cancer. Symptoms like urinary problems and sexual dysfunction can disrupt daily life and intimate relationships. Despite reluctance to address it, regular screenings and lifestyle adjustments are essential for early detection and management, preserving overall health.</p>

Genes, Cancer, and Luck

Most scientists agree that both genes and a person’s environment are causes of cancer. However, they find it difficult to agree on percentage amounts. For example, a review from the University of Glasgow in the National Library of Medicine says, “It is known that both nature and nurture play important roles in cancer development through complex gene-environment interactions; however, the exact mechanism of these interactions in carcinogenesis is presently unclear.”

<p>At this moment in time, most scientists agree that there are three spatial dimensions. However, mathematical insight has suggested that there could be more, but challenges in this field make it hard to know for sure. We still have a long way to go when it comes to understanding the universe’s structure. </p>

Existence of Extra Dimensions

At this moment in time, most scientists agree that there are three spatial dimensions. However, mathematical insight has suggested that there could be more, but challenges in this field make it hard to know for sure. We still have a long way to go when it comes to understanding the universe’s structure.

<p>There have been many philosophical and scientific questions over the theory of time. These concepts include how time flows, its direction, and even the possibility of time travel. Many scientists believe time could have a connection with game theory and cellular automata. </p>

Nature of Time

There have been many philosophical and scientific questions over the theory of time. These concepts include how time flows, its direction, and even the possibility of time travel. Many scientists believe time could have a connection with game theory and cellular automata.

<p><span>Quantum entanglement, where particles become interconnected regardless of the distance separating them, is still a baffling phenomenon in quantum physics (</span><a href="https://physicsworld.com/a/quantum-entanglement-observed-in-top-quarks/"><span>Physics World</span></a><span>). Scientists have tried and failed to explain how particles can be so affected by others even after they are physically separated.</span></p>

Quantum Mechanics vs. General Relativity

Quantum mechanics and general relativity are two completely different scientific theories . There have been many historical debates and theoretical challenges from scientists across the world. Issues arise due to general relativity being able to explain huge theories such as gravity, but if you apply quantum mechanics to this, then we should be living in a black hole.

<p>Society tends to mock people with real beliefs in UFOs, aliens, and alien abductions, considering them crazy and making jokes about tin-foil hats. Many UFO hunters find solace in groups of like-minded individuals on the internet, where there is also a veil of anonymity.</p>

Extraterrestrial Intelligent Life

There’s a high probability of other intelligent life in the universe; the only issue is that we haven’t been able to back this up with evidence. Thanks to SETI technology , astronomers can put out signals to try and detect alien life. However, it requires aliens to have similar technology to be able to send signals back.

<p><a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/liking-the-child-you-love/202310/the-most-overlooked-strategy-for-success#:~:text=Your%20brain%20is%20a%20three,that%20travel%20300%20miles%2Fhour.">Psychology Today</a> reveals that, on average, your brain produces 70,000 thoughts daily. Many of these thoughts occur rapidly and subconsciously- for example, you see that it’s raining and immediately grab your raincoat, but you don’t necessarily need to think it through!</p>

Consciousness

Consciousness has always been a topic of debate and a mystery among scientists. The nature of consciousness means understanding the brain’s processes and how we experience awareness. Both philosophers and scientists have tried to understand what makes us so smart and how we’re able to outsmart robots.

<p>With advancements in AI and machine learning, the role of the computer programmer is evolving. Routine programming tasks are increasingly automated, shifting the focus to more complex and creative aspects of software development. This evolution could change the nature of programming jobs significantly.</p>

The Limits of Computation

One thing that still remains a mystery is knowing just how complex computer systems can be and what their physical limits are. This also includes quantum computing and the potential it has to change the world. There are many unsolved problems when it comes to computer science, but as technology keeps developing, this could soon be answered.

<p>This comforting phrase suggests a cosmic safety net, implying a preordained path to success. However, this can foster a passive approach to life, waiting for the universe to step in rather than taking proactive steps towards one’s goals.</p>

The Origin of the Universe

Due to many theories about the Big Bang and cosmic inflation, most people, not just scientists, believe in them. However, there are still mysteries about the universe’s initial conditions and what the planet was like at the beginning of time. There are many questions about why it’s here and what its purpose is.

<p>Energy is an extremely valuable resource when you’re lost at sea, so it’s important to minimize unnecessary movements such as swimming as much as possible. Remain seated or still unless absolutely necessary to conserve water and calories. It’s also important to stay as warm as possible, as being cold also causes your body to burn more <a href="https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/6-unusual-ways-to-burn-calories#TOC_TITLE_HDR_2">calories</a>.</p>

The Basis of Morality

Both scientists and philosophers have debated our moral behavior. Questions arise when we think about evolution, the survival of the fittest, and how, since then, we’ve developed into moral creatures. Scientific American answers that it’s due to individuals wanting to help their kin, underscoring the concept of “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.”

<p>Your brain has an astounding storage capacity and can store memories and information throughout your life. <a href="https://www.medanta.org/patient-education-blog/what-is-the-memory-capacity-of-a-human-brain#:~:text=As%20mentioned%20in%20an%20article,2.5%20million%20gigabytes%20of%20memory.">Medanta</a> says, “A “petabyte” means 1024 terabytes, or a million gigabytes, so that the average adult human brain can accumulate the equivalent of 2.5 million gigabytes of memory.”</p>

Plasticity of the Brain

Neuroplasticity is the formation of new cells in your brain, and these can enhance your memory and learning abilities. Without it, we wouldn’t be able to learn new things, but how we’ve developed this skill still remains a mystery. There has been plenty of research into neuroplasticity by doctors and therapists, but the question of why still remains.

<p>There’s an expectation that many jobs will become automatic over the years, being carried out by the likes of AI and machinery. A <a href="https://omscgcinc.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/The-Challenger-Report-May23.pdf">report</a> by Challenger, Gray & Christmas noted that of the over 80,000 jobs cut in May 2023, approximately 5% of those, or 3,900, were due to AI. <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ai-job-losses-artificial-intelligence-challenger-report/">CBS</a> says that makes it “the seventh-highest contributor to employment losses in May cited by employers.”</p>

The Future of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence has already had a huge impact on society, but there are still mysteries about how developed it can become. Many people are already starting to question its ethical and societal implications, especially with its ability to create fake photos. There are both risks and benefits that come with AI, and it’s about finding the balance.

<p>Mysteries surround the production, behavior, and use of antimatter. It’s the opposite of matter, which is what stars and planets are made from. Because antimatter is hard to find, the mystery of why we still need it remains, as scientists believe it should’ve all disappeared with the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-66890649">Big Bang</a>. </p>

Antimatter and Its Mysteries

Mysteries surround the production, behavior, and use of antimatter. It’s the opposite of matter, which is what stars and planets are made from. Because antimatter is hard to find, the mystery of why we still need it remains, as scientists believe it should’ve all disappeared with the Big Bang .

<p><a href="https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/species/north-atlantic-right-whale">NOAA Fisheries</a> describes this animal as “one of the world’s most endangered large whale species.” The approximately 360 individuals are at risk of being struck by vessels, entanglement in fishing gear, and high noise levels interfering with their communication.</p>

The Deep Sea

There are still so many unexplored regions of the sea due to how vast and deep it is. This can mean there’s a species in the deep sea that we still don’t know about. With technological challenges, it can be impossible to thoroughly explore every single part of the ocean.

<p>Men over 60 who have just retired suddenly find themselves with a lot of time on their hands. They want to spend as much of it as possible with their families, but they could still be busy working. Because they are spending time alone that they imagined they would spend with their children, they feel lonely.</p>

Aging and Longevity

The biological mechanism of aging still remains a mystery. There has been plenty of research on life extension and anti-aging therapies, but it’s also been met with criticism. Many people believe prolonging life past a certain age can have many ethical and social implications.

<p>The properties and behavior of black holes are still unknown. Even though they’ve been studied to great lengths, they’re not fully understood. Black holes are largely misunderstood due to general relativity and quantum mechanics theories being different from one another. There are still many theories about how they’re created, and it’s something we may never fully know. </p>

The Nature of Black Holes

The properties and behavior of black holes are still unknown. Even though they’ve been studied to great lengths, they’re not fully understood. Black holes are largely misunderstood due to general relativity and quantum mechanics theories being different from one another. There are still many theories about how they’re created, and it’s something we may never fully know.

<p>Whether we can time travel or not is something that has been debated among many scientists. There have been many theoretical foundations and paradoxes surrounding time travel, but it still isn’t something that’s been tried. Many believe these theories are science fiction and will never be possible.</p>

The Possibility of Time Travel

Whether we can time travel or not is something that has been debated among many scientists. There have been many theoretical foundations and paradoxes surrounding time travel, but it still isn’t something that’s been tried. Many believe these theories are science fiction and will never be possible.

<p>Religious beliefs and practices are often misunderstood, leading to common misconceptions. Some are just too general, others are downright out there. So, we’ll be correcting 17 widely circulated ‘facts’ about world religions.</p>

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In Their Own Words: The Diverse Perspectives of Being Asian in America

In the fall of 2021, Pew Research Center undertook the largest focus group study it had ever conducted – 66 focus groups with 264 total participants – to hear Asian Americans talk about their lived experiences in America. The focus groups were organized into 18 distinct Asian ethnic origin groups, fielded in 18 languages and moderated by members of their own ethnic groups.

These quotes reflect participants’ initial reaction to the question: “What does it mean to be you in America?” Many of the participants told us this was the first time they were ever asked this question. Others told us their answers to this question had evolved over time.

Use this interactive to sort focus group quotes by ethnic origin nativity (immigrant or U.S. born), years lived in the U.S. (for immigrant participants), gender and age. To start, choose an origin group or select “view all quotes” to see responses from all focus group participants.

What does it mean to be …

… living in America?

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Researchers May Have Pinpointed Origin of Hope and Koh-i-Noor Diamonds

The Hope and Koh-i-Noor diamonds—two of the most famous Golconda diamonds —may have come from southern India’s Wajrakarur Kimberlite Field, according to a team of researchers that reviewed the possible origin points of the gems.

The Golconda diamonds were mined form the banks of southern India’s Krishna River, though their source rocks—the geological deposits where the stones actually formed—are not known. The team recently conducted a review of the mineral composition and geochemistry of the rocks in southern India, alongside geological and remote sensing (GIS) studies of the region, to figure out where the vaunted stones came from. The team’s research was published last month in the Journal of Earth System Science.

According to the Smithsonian Institution , the Hope Diamond was likely mined from the Kollur Mine before 1668. At the time the stone was 112 3/16-carats; it has since been slimmed down to 45.52 carats. The Koh-i-Noor diamond has been part of the British crown jewels since 1849, though India has called for the gemstone’s repatriation. The Koh-i-Noor is 105.6 carats.

The diamonds were found in placer mines—mines built to excavate minerals from streambed deposits. The diamonds likely were carried with sediment to their findspots from their source rock, a diamond-bearing peridotite called kimberlite. The researchers concluded the precious gems’ origins are likely 1.1-billion-year-old rocks in the Wajrakarur Kimberlite Field.

Diamonds have been recovered along a roughly 186-mile (300 kilometer) patch of the Krishna River’s banks; according to one 2005 paper , about 12 million carats of stones have been recovered from the river and its tributaries’ deposits.

However, the Type IIb diamonds are blue thanks to boron, which crystallized in rocks under extreme pressure and temperatures deeper in under Earth’s surface. In other words, the team’s research may point to where the rocks were before they were swept away, but previous research indicated diamonds like the Hope and the Koh-i-Noor formed much deeper in the planet than other diamonds.

LiveScience reported that the diamonds are missing inclusions that can clue geoscientists into the environments in which gemstones formed. It makes the rocks all the glorious to look at, but leaves more of the science to guesswork.

More: Supercomputer Hints at the Existence of ‘Super Diamonds’

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A Strategy for Origins of Life Research
Origin of Life Theories
WHAT IS ORIGIN OF LIFE ?
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The Origin and Precursor of Life
Origin Of Life On Earth
Why so many theories about the origin of life?
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Russia's Elixir of Life
Humans evolution and origin! Life of prehistoric humans

COMMENTS

To unravel the origin of life, treat findings as pieces of a ...
To promote such a culture, one of us (J.C.X.) co-founded the Origin of Life Early-career Network (OoLEN) in 2020, which has grown to more than 200 international researchers, from students to early ...
The Future of Origin of Life Research: Bridging Decades-Old Divisions
Abstract. Research on the origin of life is highly heterogeneous. After a peculiar historical development, it still includes strongly opposed views which potentially hinder progress. In the 1st Interdisciplinary Origin of Life Meeting, early-career researchers gathered to explore the commonalities between theories and approaches, critical ...
The origin of life on Earth, explained
The origin of life on Earth stands as one of the great mysteries of science. To find out if we are alone in the galaxy, we will need to better understand what geochemical conditions nurtured the first life forms. Several seminal experiments in this topic have been conducted at the University of Chicago, including the Miller-Urey experiment that suggested how the building blocks of life could ...
Origins of Life Initiative
The Origins of Life Initiative supports multi-disciplinary research aimed at revealing if life is abundant in the Universe. We seek to understand how the initial conditions on planets, including our own Earth and planets around other stars, dictated the origins of life and its subsequent evolution. Using this knowledge, it will eventually be ...
The origin of life: what we know, what we can know and what we will
The origin of life (OOL) problem remains one of the more challenging scientific questions of all time. In this essay, we propose that following recent experimental and theoretical advances in systems chemistry, the underlying principle governing the emergence of life on the Earth can in its broadest sense be specified, and may be stated as follows: all stable (persistent) replicating systems ...
How did life begin? One key ingredient is coming into view
Meanwhile, there's plenty of research left to do for origin-of-life studies. Scientists need to work out how RNAs gained the ability to self-replicate. And they need to discover how an early ...
The origin of life: what we know, what we can know and what we will
The origin of life (OOL) problem remains one of the more challenging scientific questions of all time. In this essay, we propose that following recent experimental and theoretical advances in systems chemistry, the underlying principle governing the emergence of life on the Earth can in its broadest sense be specified, and may be stated as follows: all stable (persistent) replicating systems ...
How Did Life Begin?
The discovery of thousands of exoplanets has sparked a renaissance in origin-of-life studies. ... Earth gave rise to RNA and to RNA-based cells is the central question of origin-of-life research ...
How did life on Earth begin? Cracks may have been the key
"In other words, for cooking the 'primordial soup,' the casserole is important," Juan Manuel García-Ruiz, a research professor at the Donostia International Physics Center in Spain who ...
Research Efforts
Research Efforts. Lipid vesicles (red) contain fluorescently-labelled RNA (green). These simple assemblies serve as a basic model for primitive cells (or protocells) that we expect would have eventually evolved into systems capable of Darwinian evolution. The Harvard Origins of Life Initiative is comprised of researchers from many diverse ...
Rethinking the Search for the Origins of Life
The uncertainties that have emerged in origins-of-life research can serve as nuclei for building a community engaged in interdisciplinary Earth science research. ... B., and D. Deamer (2020), The ...
Scientists Discover 'Key Stepping Stone' to the Origin of Life
"This research may also help inform the search for similar chemistry, and the origin of life, elsewhere in our solar system," researchers told Newsweek.
The Future of Origin of Life Research: Bridging Decades-Old Divisions
Abstract. Research on the origin of life is highly heterogeneous. After a peculiar historical development, it still includes strongly opposed views which potentially hinder progress. In the 1st Interdisciplinary Origin of Life Meeting, early-career researchers gathered to explore the commonalities between theories and approaches, critical ...
Beginnings: Life on Our World and Others
The first story in a six-part series on NASA's Search for Life takes a close look at the origin of our solar system, and the building blocks of life. ... Much of NASA's astrobiology research, studying the origins and requirements of life in the cosmos, begins right here at home. And it goes all the way back to the birth of our star, the Sun ...
The Origins of Life
Scientists studying the origin of life today face a chicken-and-egg problem: in modern cells, the genetic instructions of DNA are translated and carried out by RNA and proteins, which perform cellular functions—including building DNA. ... In 2009, John Sutherland's lab at the University of Manchester made a major breakthrough in origins of ...
Origins of life: Uncovering the mystery of how life began on Earth
HOW did life on Earth begin? Until 70 years ago, generations of scientists had failed to throw much light on biology's murky beginnings. But then came three crucial findings in quick succession.
The Origins of Life
A flame heated the water, sending vapor upward. In the atmosphere flask, electric sparks simulated lightning. The experiment was such a long shot that Miller's adviser, Harold Urey, thought it a ...
Research Center a Hub for Origins of Life Studies
Despite this sobering reality — or perhaps because of it — a new center for the study of early Earth and the origin of life was formed several years ago with the goal of approaching the issue in new ways. The sponsor of this substantial effort is the government of Japan and its World Premier International Research Center Initiative (WPI ...
Modeling the origins of life: New evidence for an 'RNA World'
March 4, 2024. Source: Salk Institute. Summary: Scientists provide fresh insights on the origins of life, presenting compelling evidence supporting the 'RNA World' hypothesis. The study unveils an ...
A Strategy for Origins of Life Research
The origin of life is a problem that is studied by scientists working in a wide variety of fields. These communities differ not only in the types of questions they ask but also in what is taken to constitute an answer. Communication between such different perspectives can be difficult, but the origin of life is a problem that requires precisely ...
Life
Life - Origin, Evolution, Abiogenesis: Perhaps the most fundamental and at the same time the least understood biological problem is the origin of life. It is central to many scientific and philosophical problems and to any consideration of extraterrestrial life. Most of the hypotheses of the origin of life will fall into one of four categories: Hypothesis 1, the traditional contention of ...
History of research into the origin of life
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek. Traditional religion attributed the origin of life to deities who created the natural world. Spontaneous generation, the first naturalistic theory of abiogenesis, goes back to Aristotle and ancient Greek philosophy, and continued to have support in Western scholarship until the 19th century. The theory held that "lower" animals are generated by decaying organic substances.
Chemical origin of life
The chemical origin of life refers to the conditions that might have existed and therefore promoted the first replicating life forms. It considers the physical and chemical reactions that could ...
Unravelling the origins of life: digging deeper
Unravelling the origins of life: digging deeper. Introduction. This is the second article of our two-part series on historical developments and contemporary research advances in the field of origin of life. In this series' first article, we provided a broad overview of the questions within the origin of life research, using a historical ...
Debunking a Decades-Long Misconception about the Origin of the
The research was led by postdoctoral scholar Brittany Edens and is described in a paper appearing on April 17 in the journal Nature. Bronner's laboratory studies neural crest cells, a kind of stem cell specific to vertebrates that gives rise to various cell types throughout the body.
EU should adopt research-based approach to ensure quality, safety of
Substances of human origin (SoHOs) such as blood, plasma, skin, corneas, and embryos play an increasing role in life-saving medical procedures. Governments around the world are reevaluating their ...
Marine plankton behavior could predict future marine extinctions
June 19, 2019 — A new study shows how marine life around Antarctica returned after the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs. A team studied just under 3000 marine fossils collected from ...
20 of the Biggest Scientific Mysteries Around the World
The Origin of the Universe. Due to many theories about the Big Bang and cosmic inflation, most people, not just scientists, believe in them. ... There has been plenty of research on life extension ...
Being Asian in America
Use this interactive to sort focus group quotes by ethnic origin nativity (immigrant or U.S. born), years lived in the U.S. (for immigrant participants), gender and age. To start, choose an origin group or select "view all quotes" to see responses from all focus group participants.
Researchers May Have Pinpointed Origin of Hope and Koh-i-Noor ...
The team's research was published last month in the Journal of Earth System Science. According to the Smithsonian Institution, the Hope Diamond was likely mined from the Kollur Mine before 1668 ...