Talk:Abiogenesis/Primary sources

This is a list of primary-sourced content which has been removed from the Abiogenesis article. Generally, this means that the significance of these statements are unclear due to a lack of mention in reliable secondary or tertiary sources. The statements are being placed here in case their significance is established in the future.

Early conditions

The earliest life on Earth

• Lazcano and Miller (1994) suggest that the rapidity of the evolution of life is dictated by the rate of recirculating water through mid-ocean submarine vents. Since complete recirculation takes 10 million years, any organic compounds produced by then would be altered or destroyed by temperatures exceeding 300 °C (572 °F). They estimate that the development of a 100 kilobase genome of a DNA/protein primitive heterotroph into a 7000 gene filamentous cyanobacterium would have required only 7 Ma.

Current models

• In vitro evolution of pre-biological polymer catalysts has been demonstrated in 2000 by Hiroaki Suga and supports, he suggests, the RNA world model of abiogenesis.
• M. Sumper and R. Luce of Eigen's laboratory accidentally discovered that a mixture containing no RNA at all but only RNA bases and Q-Beta Replicase can, under the right conditions, spontaneously generate self-replicating RNA which evolves into a form similar to Spiegelman's Monster.

Origin of organic molecules

Chemical synthesis

• Research by Christof Biebricher showed the formation of RNA molecules 400 bases long under freezing conditions using an RNA template, a single-strand chain of RNA that guides the formation of a new strand of RNA. As that new RNA strand grows, it adheres to the template.
• Martin and Russell showed that physical compartmentation by cell membranes from the environment and self-organization of self-contained redox reactions are the most conserved attributes of living things, and they argue therefore that inorganic matter with such attributes would be life's most likely last common ancestor.

Homochirality

• Noyes showed that beta decay caused the breakdown of D-leucine, in a racemic mixture, and that the presence of ¹⁴C, present in larger amounts in organic chemicals in the early Earth environment, could have been the cause.

RNA world

RNA synthesis and replication

• Cytosine has a half-life of 19 days at 100 °C (212 °F) and 17,000 years in freezing water.

Origin of metabolism

Iron-sulfur world

• Harold J. Morowitz concludes that given sufficient concentrations of ingredients, the Krebs cycle will "spin" of its own, as the concentration of each intermediate rises, it tends to convert into the next intermediate spontaneously. It thus appears to be in origin, not a creation of the genes, but the product of thermodynamics and chemistry alone.

Deep sea vent hypothesis

• In 2013 Ignatov and Mosin made an analysis of a jellyfish. This analysis also showed that life may have predominantly originated in hot mineral water.
• In 2011 Marie-Laure Pons explored the oldest rocks on the planet containing serpentine. French scientists demonstrated that water was rich in carbonates.

Thermosynthesis

• It is assumed RNA sequences were selected among the randomly synthesized RNAs by the relative speed and efficiency increase of "first protein" synthesis, for instance by the creation of RNA that functioned as messenger RNA, transfer RNA and ribosomal RNA, or, even more generally, all the components of the RNA world were also generated and selected. This accounts for the origin of the genetic machinery.