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Origin Of Life

All articles tagged with #origin of life

SpudCells Divide Briefly, Offering Clues About Minimal Life
science12 days ago

SpudCells Divide Briefly, Offering Clues About Minimal Life

A Minnesota team built a simplified, membrane-encased system that imports nutrients and uses viral components to copy DNA, creating 'SpudCells' that feed, grow, and undergo a few rounds of division before genome pieces drift and are lost; the division is driven by merging with a food membrane and pore-protein clumping, enabling natural selection in this engineered protocell—useful for studying origin-of-life questions but not a true primitive cell.

via Ars Technica|
#membrane#origin-of-life#protocell
Researchers Build the First Synthetic Cell From Nonliving Chemistry
science13 days ago

Researchers Build the First Synthetic Cell From Nonliving Chemistry

Scientists have built SpudCell, a synthetic cell assembled from nonliving chemical components that can feed, grow and replicate for about five generations; though far simpler than natural cells and requiring externally supplied ribosomes, the work marks a milestone in synthetic biology toward understanding life's origins and enabling future bioengineering, with safety safeguards discussed and the core technology to be shared openly via Biotic.

via CNN|
#biosafety#open-source-biology#origin-of-life
Lab recreates ancient hot-spring networks, yielding protocells
science3 months ago

Lab recreates ancient hot-spring networks, yielding protocells

Researchers built a 3D-printed, networked system of hot-spring pools controlled by an Arduino; through repeated wet-dry cycling, the setup produced lipid vesicles that encapsulated RNA, forming crude protocells and advancing a more realistic model of how life’s building blocks may have formed in Earth’s early hydrothermal fields.

via Indian Defence Review|
#hot-springs#origin-of-life#prebiotic-chemistry
A Tiny RNA Enzyme Edges the RNA World Toward Self-Replication
science3 months ago

A Tiny RNA Enzyme Edges the RNA World Toward Self-Replication

Researchers report QT45, a small polymerase ribozyme that can copy its own RNA and its template, demonstrating two crucial steps toward self-replication and bolstering the RNA world hypothesis; while not yet fully self-replicating, QT45 is smaller and more plausible to arise in prebiotic conditions than earlier ribozymes, discovered by screening trillions of random RNAs under cold conditions, with next steps to improve speed and yield.

via ScienceAlert|
#origin-of-life#qt45#ribozyme
Ancient Microbes May Have Emerged in Earth's Harsh Hadean Era
science3 months ago

Ancient Microbes May Have Emerged in Earth's Harsh Hadean Era

New geochemical data and molecular-clock analysis suggest life could have arisen during Earth's fiery Hadean period, about 4.4–4.2 billion years ago, with LUCA as the Last Universal Common Ancestor and LECA leading to modern eukaryotes; evidence points to liquid water despite extreme conditions, and ongoing genome recovery efforts may further refine when these ancestral stages appeared.

via indiandefencereview.com|
#hadean#leca#luca
Ryugu Samples Show All Five Nucleobases, Hinting Life’s Ingredients Arrived from Space
space-and-spaceflight4 months ago

Ryugu Samples Show All Five Nucleobases, Hinting Life’s Ingredients Arrived from Space

A Nature Astronomy study analyzing Hayabusa2’s Ryugu samples found all five nucleobases—the DNA/RNA building blocks—supporting the idea that asteroids delivered the ingredients for life to early Earth. The researchers note Ryugu has roughly equal amounts of purine and pyrimidine bases, unlike some meteorites, and that ammonia concentration may influence nucleobase formation, suggesting such molecules could have been more widespread in the early solar system.

via Gizmodo|
#astrobiology#hayabusa2#nucleobases
Sun’s outward drift in the Milky Way billions of years ago may have fostered Earth’s life
astronomy4 months ago

Sun’s outward drift in the Milky Way billions of years ago may have fostered Earth’s life

New Gaia-based research suggests the Sun and many Sun-like stars formed at similar times and distances from the Milky Way’s center and likely migrated outward from the galactic core about 4–6 billion years ago as the Milky Way’s central bar evolved. This outward journey could have placed our solar system in a calmer outer disk for much of its history, potentially aiding Earth’s habitability and the emergence of life. The findings stem from two astronomy studies analyzing ~6,600 solar twins within ~1,000 light-years and will be broadened with upcoming Gaia data.

via Space|
#astronomy#galactic-bar#milky-way
Ancient Asgard archaea may have used oxygen long before Earth’s oxygenation reshaped life
planet-earth4 months ago

Ancient Asgard archaea may have used oxygen long before Earth’s oxygenation reshaped life

A Nature study analyzing deep-sea sediments found Heimdallarchaeia genomes with components of aerobic respiration, suggesting Asgard archaea could tolerate and potentially use oxygen long before Earth’s oxygenation, providing metabolic groundwork for the archaeal–eukaryotic merger that gave rise to complex life.

via Live Science|
#asgard-archaea#eukaryotes#heimdallarchaeia
Tiny 45-base ribozyme copies itself, nudging origin-of-life theories
science5 months ago

Tiny 45-base ribozyme copies itself, nudging origin-of-life theories

Researchers identified QT-45, a 45-base RNA ribozyme that can act like a tiny polymerase to copy RNA strands and, crucially, can synthesize a copy of its own sequence by base-pairing with a template. In tests, QT-45 copied various RNAs with about 95% fidelity (roughly 2–3 errors per copy), though the process is slow. This demonstrates self-replicating RNA is plausible at very small sizes and could be refined by evolution under prebiotic conditions.

via Ars Technica|
#origin-of-life#polymerase#ribozyme
Lab-made cosmic dust sheds light on life's beginnings
science5 months ago

Lab-made cosmic dust sheds light on life's beginnings

A University of Sydney doctoral student creates tiny cosmic-dust analogues in the lab by exciting a mix of nitrogen, carbon dioxide and acetylene with 10,000 volts of electricity, reproducing conditions around stars to study how dust catalyzes organic molecules and potentially seeded life; the team aims to build a database of dust types to compare with meteorites and astronomical observations.

via cnn.com|
#astrochemistry#cosmic-dust#linda-losurdo