#Astrobiologist explores likelihood of #life originating on #Earth
#abiogenesis #origin_of_life #bayesian_analysis
https://phys.org/news/2024-08-astrobiologist-explores-likelihood-life-earth.html
Florida Tech astrobiologist Manasvi Lingam has asked life's biggest questions from a young age. Though he can't recall his exact queries, he says his interests were perfectly consistent with those of other children: dinosaurs and aliens.
Great talk about the RNA world origin of life, by Nobel laureate Jack Szostak: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fSh6uWrNMA
(from 2020)
Insight into one of #life’s earliest ancestors
An international team of researchers led by the University of Bristol has shed light on Earth’s earliest ecosystem, showing that within a few hundred million years of planetary formation, life on Earth was already flourishing.
Researchers shed light on how key ingredient for life may form in space.
#hydroxymethylene #carbene #origin_of_life #astrobiology
https://phys.org/news/2024-05-key-ingredient-life-space.html
A team led by University of Maryland chemists discovered a new way to create carbenes, a class of highly reactive yet notoriously short-lived and unstable molecules. Involved in many high-energy chemical reactions such as the creation of carbohydrates, carbenes are crucial precursors to the building blocks of life on Earth—and possibly in space.
Loathed by scientists, loved by nature: #Sulfur and the #origin_of_life.
https://phys.org/news/2024-03-loathed-scientists-nature-sulfur-life.html
Many artists have tried to depict what Earth might have looked like billions of years ago, before life made its appearance. Many scenes trade snow-covered mountains for lava-gushing volcanoes and blue skies for lightning bolts pummeling what's below from a hazy sky.
Shedding light on the synthesis of #sugars before the #origin_of_life
Artificial #cells demonstrate that 'life finds a way'.
Evolutionary biologist Jay T. Lennon's research team has been studying a synthetically constructed minimal cell that has been stripped of all but its essential genes. The team found that the streamlined cell can evolve just as fast as a normal cell—demonstrating the capacity for organisms to adapt, even with an unnatural genome that would seemingly provide little flexibility.
Discovery of novel primitive xeno #nucleic_acids as alternative #genetic polymers adds piece to #origin_of_life puzzle.
#evolution #astrobiology #biogenesis
https://phys.org/news/2023-06-discovery-primitive-xeno-nucleic-acids.html
The chemical origin of life on Earth is a puzzle that scientists have been trying to piece together for decades. Many hypotheses have been proposed to explain how life came to be and what chemical and environmental factors on early Earth could have led to it. A step required in a number of these hypotheses involves the abiotic synthesis of genetic polymers—materials made up of a sequence of repeating chemical units with the ability to store and pass down information through base-pairing interactions.
#Meteoritic and #volcanic particles may have promoted #origin_of_life reactions.
#evolution #prebiotic #abiogenesis
https://phys.org/news/2023-05-meteoritic-volcanic-particles-life-reactions.html
Precursors of the molecules needed for the origin of life may have been generated by chemical reactions promoted by iron-rich particles from meteors or volcanic eruptions on Earth approximately 4.4 billion years ago, according to a study published in Scientific Reports.
CellBioNews
Florian Marquardt