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Exposed Areas Above Sea Level on Earth >3.5 Gyr Ago: Implications for Prebiotic and Primitive Biotic Chemistry

How life began on Earth is still largely shrouded in mystery. One of the central ideas for various origins of life scenarios is Darwin’s “warm little pond”. In these small bodies of water, simple prebiotic compounds such as amino acids, nucleobases, and so on, were produced from reagents such as hyd...

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Autores principales: Bada, Jeffrey L., Korenaga, Jun
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6316429/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30400350
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/life8040055
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author Bada, Jeffrey L.
Korenaga, Jun
author_facet Bada, Jeffrey L.
Korenaga, Jun
author_sort Bada, Jeffrey L.
collection PubMed
description How life began on Earth is still largely shrouded in mystery. One of the central ideas for various origins of life scenarios is Darwin’s “warm little pond”. In these small bodies of water, simple prebiotic compounds such as amino acids, nucleobases, and so on, were produced from reagents such as hydrogen cyanide and aldehydes/ketones. These simple prebiotic compounds underwent further reactions, producing more complex molecules. The process of chemical evolution would have produced increasingly complex molecules, eventually yielding a molecule with the properties of information storage and replication prone to random mutations, the hallmark of both the origin of life and evolution. However, there is one problematic issue with this scenario: On the Earth >3.5 Gyr ago there would have likely been no exposed continental crust above sea level. The only land areas that protruded out of the oceans would have been associated with hotspot volcanic islands, such as the Hawaiian island chain today. On these long-lived islands, in association with reduced gas-rich eruptions accompanied by intense volcanic lightning, prebiotic reagents would have been produced that accumulated in warm or cool little ponds and lakes on the volcano flanks. During seasonal wet–dry cycles, molecules with increasing complexity could have been produced. These islands would have thus been the most likely places for chemical evolution and the processes associated with the origin of life. The islands would eventually be eroded away and their chemical evolution products would have been released into the oceans where Darwinian evolution ultimately produced the biochemistry associated with all life on Earth today.
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spelling pubmed-63164292019-01-10 Exposed Areas Above Sea Level on Earth >3.5 Gyr Ago: Implications for Prebiotic and Primitive Biotic Chemistry Bada, Jeffrey L. Korenaga, Jun Life (Basel) Article How life began on Earth is still largely shrouded in mystery. One of the central ideas for various origins of life scenarios is Darwin’s “warm little pond”. In these small bodies of water, simple prebiotic compounds such as amino acids, nucleobases, and so on, were produced from reagents such as hydrogen cyanide and aldehydes/ketones. These simple prebiotic compounds underwent further reactions, producing more complex molecules. The process of chemical evolution would have produced increasingly complex molecules, eventually yielding a molecule with the properties of information storage and replication prone to random mutations, the hallmark of both the origin of life and evolution. However, there is one problematic issue with this scenario: On the Earth >3.5 Gyr ago there would have likely been no exposed continental crust above sea level. The only land areas that protruded out of the oceans would have been associated with hotspot volcanic islands, such as the Hawaiian island chain today. On these long-lived islands, in association with reduced gas-rich eruptions accompanied by intense volcanic lightning, prebiotic reagents would have been produced that accumulated in warm or cool little ponds and lakes on the volcano flanks. During seasonal wet–dry cycles, molecules with increasing complexity could have been produced. These islands would have thus been the most likely places for chemical evolution and the processes associated with the origin of life. The islands would eventually be eroded away and their chemical evolution products would have been released into the oceans where Darwinian evolution ultimately produced the biochemistry associated with all life on Earth today. MDPI 2018-11-04 /pmc/articles/PMC6316429/ /pubmed/30400350 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/life8040055 Text en © 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Bada, Jeffrey L.
Korenaga, Jun
Exposed Areas Above Sea Level on Earth >3.5 Gyr Ago: Implications for Prebiotic and Primitive Biotic Chemistry
title Exposed Areas Above Sea Level on Earth >3.5 Gyr Ago: Implications for Prebiotic and Primitive Biotic Chemistry
title_full Exposed Areas Above Sea Level on Earth >3.5 Gyr Ago: Implications for Prebiotic and Primitive Biotic Chemistry
title_fullStr Exposed Areas Above Sea Level on Earth >3.5 Gyr Ago: Implications for Prebiotic and Primitive Biotic Chemistry
title_full_unstemmed Exposed Areas Above Sea Level on Earth >3.5 Gyr Ago: Implications for Prebiotic and Primitive Biotic Chemistry
title_short Exposed Areas Above Sea Level on Earth >3.5 Gyr Ago: Implications for Prebiotic and Primitive Biotic Chemistry
title_sort exposed areas above sea level on earth >3.5 gyr ago: implications for prebiotic and primitive biotic chemistry
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6316429/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30400350
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/life8040055
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