Lifelike chemistry created in lab search for ways to study origin of life
Date: November 14, 2019
Source: University of Wisconsin-Madison
Summary: Researchers have cultivated lifelike chemical reactions while pioneering a new strategy for studying the origin of life.
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Date: November 14, 2019
Source: University of Wisconsin-Madison
Summary: Researchers have cultivated lifelike chemical reactions while pioneering a new strategy for studying the origin of life.
Quote:University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have cultivated lifelike chemical reactions while pioneering a new strategy for studying the origin of life.
The work is far from jumpstarting life in the lab. Yet, it shows that simple laboratory techniques can spur the kinds of reactions that are likely necessary to explain how life got started on Earth some four billion years ago.
The researchers subjected a rich soup of organic chemicals to repeated selection by constantly paring down the chemical population and letting it build back up again with the addition of new resources. Over generations of selection, the system appeared to consume its raw materials, evidence that selection may have induced the spread of chemical networks capable of propagating themselves.
On longer timescales, these chemical changes oscillated in a repeating pattern. This boom-and-bust cycle isn't yet fully explained, but it is good evidence that the chemical soups established feedback loops resembling those found in living organisms. David Baum, a UW-Madison professor of botany, and his team published their findings Oct. 23, 2019, in the journal Life. The work was funded by the National Science Foundation and NASA.
Now, other researchers can use this experimental approach and help untangle what components are necessary to encourage lifelike chemical systems and whether those chemical networks can go on to evolve more complex traits.
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