A team of researchers at Purdue University in the US say they have discovered the ingredient, the “chemistry behind the origin of life on Earth” cit. And she is announcing it with extreme confidence and determination.
Graham Cooks, a chemistry professor at Purdue, is the lead author of the new study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (I link it here). He doesn't mince words:
It's an incredible discovery, it's the secret ingredient for building life. It is the first demonstration that primordial molecules, simple amino acids, spontaneously form peptides, the building blocks of life, in droplets of pure water.
Graham Cooks in the statement presenting the results of the study.
A disruptive announcement
The discovery is causing a small cataclysm in the scientific community, because it could have far-reaching implications for our understanding of how life formed on Earth billions of years ago.
“I find it a really fascinating discovery,” he says Alan Doucette, associate professor at Dalhousie University in Canada.
The evidence seems to be mounting that there is something truly unique and extraordinary about the chemistry of water.
Alan Doucette
The “secret” ingredient was before our eyes
In summary, the research supports a historical theory: that life on Earth began in the oceans. Amino acids (which scientists believe arrived on Earth billions of years ago, brought by meteor showers) can bind together to form peptides, then proteins, and ultimately life.
What has astonished researchers, however, is the scale of the phenomenon. Using cutting-edge spectrometers to closely observe chemical reactions inside water droplets, Cooks and his colleagues found that “extremely rapid reactions can occur” where water droplets meet the atmosphere.
How fast? Much. Very, very much.
“Reaction rates in droplets are a hundred to a million times faster than the same chemicals reacting in bulk solution,” Cooks said.
What do we know about water?
Cooks and his team go so far as to say that the building blocks of life can form spontaneously in water itself, without the need for other catalysts.
Purdue's conclusions will help answer many questions still standing. From making better drugs to understanding the basic processes involved in the formation of life on Earth, or even creating our own versions of life.
“We all know that water was and is essential to life on Earth,” Doucette says. “But we still have a lot to learn.”
