We all remember that heat speeds up chemical reactions. Ergo the first organic material was forged in the warm primordial soup of the early world. Simple. Boom. Done deal. Or maybe not. New findings are backing up a theory that life originated in ice.
In 1982, Stanley Miller put ammonia and cyanide (two simple compounds that scientists believe were readily present on the early planet) into a vial and kept it frozen at -77.8 degrees Celsius (or -108 degrees Fahrenheit for American systemophiles (yes I just made that word up)) for twenty-five years. Instead of being colorless, as the concoction originally was, it was amber, a color of complex polymers of organic molecules when revealed. So what was in the vial? Nucleotides: the building blocks of RNA and DNA, amino acids: the building blocks of proteins, and chains of RNA. So ice might have been a favorable environment to generate the first self-replicating molecules, a precondition for life. RNA is short for ribonucleic acids. RNA encodes the production of proteins from amino acids, which in turn produce organisms.
Alright, so RNA was present. Big deal. The big deal is that the RNA was self-replicating. That is RNA can produce more and more of itself without assistance from any other organic compound. RNA molecules turn out to fall apart relatively easily in warm conditions outside of cells. Freezing will actually speed up the replication of RNA. The ice contains tiny compartments that hold the segments of RNA in place, where it can react together. Some of these reactions actually produce longer chains of RNA molecules. These longer chains of RNA molecules can create enzymes which are chemical compounds that do funky stuff in chemical reactions like speeding them up and increasing the product. A young scientists Alexander Vlassov discovered why this happens so easily in ice. He was trying to develop RNA enzymes for a cure for Hepatitis. Although he started with whole chains of RNA, whenever he exposed them to a room temperature, the pieces would break apart. and every time he froze them in order to purify the segments, the RNA would spontaneously couple at the ends to form a circle. This occurs because when hairpin, an enzyme that cuts RNA chains, is frozen, it acted in reverse; glued the RNA together instead. When an enzyme cuts an RNA chain, a water molecule is expelled. By removing most of the liquid water, ice creates conditions that allow the RNA enzyme to work in just one direction, joining RNA chains. Although enzymes can be produced in warm environments, it seems that they are very short and ergo ineffective. Freezing, however, stabilizes the complexes formed from smaller segments of RNA and produces more effective enzymes. Also interesting, the RNA enzymes in cold environments joined with almost any molecule, which can attribute for the variety of sequences necessary for biological diversity.
Great. So RNA came before DNA and it may very well have began to form in ice. What does it all mean? It means that simple life forms or perquisites to life may be found on planets formerly thought to be inhospitable. “Extraterrestrial” life may be found in our very own solar system! Europa, a moon of Jupiter, Titan, a moon of Saturn, or Mars, all have frozen water (ice, duh), which very well may mean that simple life can be found there. They may not be green, thin men, but these aliens could prove that we are not alone in the cosmos. We have entered a place called … “The Twilight Zone.” [Cue Twilight Zone music] I hope you enjoyed my first blog post and learned something.
I had never heard about this theory before! Very interesting for sure! Ok, sorry about the link, it’s working now!
Thanks so much for the help in publicizing my blog.
Fascinating and really educating dude! Pretty darn cool blog ya got there! Keep up the good work! I’ll be reading this more often! Good Luck!
Hi,
your first line is a bit confusing. You might want to edit; to paraphrase, it reads
‘In 1997 Stanley Miller put ammonia and cyanaide into a vial, and froze it for 25 years.’
If he put the ingredients into the vial in 1997, 25 years hasn’t passed yet. 😉
Otherwise, a nifty entry!!
Thanks for the note. Yeah, that was just a typo; nice catch.
That is so cool!
Incidentally, do you have the abstract for this?
Abstract?