Meteorites could have been source of life’s batteries
THE first life on Earth might have acquired its “batteries” from an alien source. Rocks that crashed to Earth could have supplied early organisms with essential molecules that allowed them to store energy, ensuring that they could go on to give rise to all terrestrial life we see today.
Every organism has built-in batteries in the form of molecules that store energy from food until needed. These storage molecules are all based on phosphorus. But early life needed meteorites to supply it in a useful form because terrestrial phosphorus would have been locked away in minerals.
Today the most common energy store is adenosine triphosphate (ATP), used by millions of complex organisms. But how did these battery molecules first evolve? It takes enzymes to make ATP and to release its energy, but the first organisms wouldn’t have been sophisticated enough to make them. So researchers think a simpler storage molecule must have preceded ATP.
According to Terry Kee of the University of Leeds in the UK, the first energy store could have been a molecule called pyrophosphite that contains phosphorus, oxygen and hydrogen. It has many of the same chemical properties as ATP but is more reactive so no enzymes would be needed.
To see whether pyrophosphite could have formed when meteorites landed on early Earth, Kee’s team studied a Siberian meteorite that contained a lot of phosphorus. They incubated fragments of the meteorite in acidic water collected from volcanic ponds in Iceland, thought to be chemically similar to the water on primordial Earth. After four days in the water, the meteorite samples had released large quantities of phosphite. When this was dried out, it transformed into pyrophosphite (Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, doi.org/kzc). “We have shown that it’s very easy to form,” Kee says.
Read the entire article by Michael Marshall at New Scientist.
Meteorites Could Have Been Source of Life’s Batteries
Could have? Really? This article is an example of “Scientist” “pushing” their religous agenda. Is this the best that science has? I mean “pushing” in the purest marketing sence. Note why these batteries are needed. Life molecules need food and that is hard to get when the first molecules were “created”. Without other life molecules, there is no food. The point here is the first life molecules need food and evolution needs to find it.
Meteorites could have been source of life’s batteries
THE first life on Earth might have acquired its “batteries” from an alien source. Rocks that crashed to Earth could have supplied early organisms with essential molecules that allowed them to store energy, ensuring that they could go on to give rise to all terrestrial life we see today.
Every organism has built-in batteries in the form of molecules that store energy from food until needed. These storage molecules are all based on phosphorus. But early life needed meteorites to supply it in a useful form because terrestrial phosphorus would have been locked away in minerals.
Today the most common energy store is adenosine triphosphate (ATP), used by millions of complex organisms. But how did these battery molecules first evolve? It takes enzymes to make ATP and to release its energy, but the first organisms wouldn’t have been sophisticated enough to make them. So researchers think a simpler storage molecule must have preceded ATP.
According to Terry Kee of the University of Leeds in the UK, the first energy store could have been a molecule called pyrophosphite that contains phosphorus, oxygen and hydrogen. It has many of the same chemical properties as ATP but is more reactive so no enzymes would be needed.
To see whether pyrophosphite could have formed when meteorites landed on early Earth, Kee’s team studied a Siberian meteorite that contained a lot of phosphorus. They incubated fragments of the meteorite in acidic water collected from volcanic ponds in Iceland, thought to be chemically similar to the water on primordial Earth. After four days in the water, the meteorite samples had released large quantities of phosphite. When this was dried out, it transformed into pyrophosphite (Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, doi.org/kzc). “We have shown that it’s very easy to form,” Kee says.
Read the entire article by Michael Marshall at New Scientist.
Meteorites could have been source of life’s batteries
THE first life on Earth might have acquired its “batteries” from an alien source. Rocks that crashed to Earth could have supplied early organisms with essential molecules that allowed them to store energy, ensuring that they could go on to give rise to all terrestrial life we see today.
Every organism has built-in batteries in the form of molecules that store energy from food until needed. These storage molecules are all based on phosphorus. But early life needed meteorites to supply it in a useful form because terrestrial phosphorus would have been locked away in minerals.
Today the most common energy store is adenosine triphosphate (ATP), used by millions of complex organisms. But how did these battery molecules first evolve? It takes enzymes to make ATP and to release its energy, but the first organisms wouldn’t have been sophisticated enough to make them. So researchers think a simpler storage molecule must have preceded ATP.
According to Terry Kee of the University of Leeds in the UK, the first energy store could have been a molecule called pyrophosphite that contains phosphorus, oxygen and hydrogen. It has many of the same chemical properties as ATP but is more reactive so no enzymes would be needed.
To see whether pyrophosphite could have formed when meteorites landed on early Earth, Kee’s team studied a Siberian meteorite that contained a lot of phosphorus. They incubated fragments of the meteorite in acidic water collected from volcanic ponds in Iceland, thought to be chemically similar to the water on primordial Earth. After four days in the water, the meteorite samples had released large quantities of phosphite. When this was dried out, it transformed into pyrophosphite (Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, doi.org/kzc). “We have shown that it’s very easy to form,” Kee says.
Read the entire article by Michael Marshall at New Scientist.
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