Life is built on chemistry, but the chemistry required to jump from the basic amino acids and small organic molecules expected on the Early Earth to the components of Life-As-We-Know-It – lipids, proteins and nucleic acids – has been obscure, until now. The scenario outlined in Nature Chemistry [doi:10.1038/nchem.2202] also explains why the various chemical components of our kind of life are so very similar. Even though they perform quite different roles, the building blocks are similar, produced originally by very similar chemical processes.
The key-point is the relatedness and the step-by-step creation of one component or another, by short chemical processes, from the basic materials. To have produced such serial chemistry would have required means of isolating the raw materials and products, then mixing them. The next image from the paper provides a hint of what would’ve been required, on some sun-drenched landscape, swept by occasional rains, in an atmosphere of (probably) H2, N2, CO2 and H2O…
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