From
Discover Magazine:
How Did Life Start? Earth could have been just another empty chunk of rock. But something happened here, and it may have taken place on a stage of clay.
"The precise arrangement of metal ions in the clay may be capable of catalyzing specific reactions of organic molecules on the clay surface."
From a Google books passage in the book
From MEMS to Bio-MEMS and Bio-NEMS: Manufacturing Techniques and Applications by Marc J. Madou, PhD, of the University of California, Irvine.
"What about proteins, DNA, and other complex organic compound? Where did they from.? In open water, hydolysis reactions owuld have broen them apart as fast as they assembled. By one hypothesis,the clay of tidal flats bound and protected newly forming polymers. CLays are rich in mineral ions that can attract amino acids or nucleotides. Once a few of these molecules bind to clay, others bond to them, forming chains that resemble proteins or nucleic acids.
By another hypothesis, biological mplecules could have formed at deep-sea hydrothermal vents. The depths of ancient seas were oxygen-poor Expreriments show that amino acids will condense into protein-like structures when heated in water."
A Google Books excerpt from
Biology Today and Tomorrow with Physiology by Cecie Starr, Ms. Starr is the most prolific contemporary author of university-level biology textbooks.
"Crystalline surfaces of common rock-forming minerals are likely to have played several important roles in life’s geochemical origins. Transition metal sulfides and oxides promote a variety of organic reactions, including nitrogen reduction, hydroformylation, amination, and Fischer-Tropsch-type synthesis. Fine-grained clay minerals and hydroxides facilitate lipid self-organization and condensation polymerization reactions, notably of RNA monomers. Surfaces of common rock-forming oxides, silicates, and carbonates select and concentrate specific amino acids, sugars, and other molecular species, while potentially enhancing their thermal stabilities. Chiral surfaces of these minerals also have been shown to separate left- and right-handed molecules. Thus, mineral surfaces may have contributed centrally to the linked prebiotic problems of containment and organization by promoting the transition from a dilute prebiotic “soup” to highly ordered local domains of key biomolecules."
From the abstract of
Mineral Surfaces, Geochemical Complexities, and the Origins of Life, by Hazen and Sverjensky.
Retreived from the National Center for Biotechnology Information.
