Water Droplets Hold the Secret Ingredient for Building Life
Chemists uncover key to early Earth chemistry, which could unlock paths to speed up chemical synthesis for drug discovery.
Purdue University chemists have discovered a mechanism for peptide-forming reactions to occur in water — something that has baffled scientists for decades.
“This is essentially the chemistry behind the origin of life,” said Graham Cooks. He is the Henry Bohn Hass Distinguished Professor of Analytical Chemistry in Purdue’s College of Science. “This is the first demonstration that primordial molecules, simple amino acids, spontaneously form peptides, the building blocks of life, in droplets of pure water. This is a dramatic discovery.”
This water-based chemistry, which leads to proteins and ultimately to life on Earth, could also lead to the faster development of medicines to treat humanity’s most debilitating diseases.
Scientists have theorized for decades that life on Earth began in the oceans. However, the chemistry behind this remained an enigma. Raw amino acids — something that meteorites delivered to early Earth daily — can react and latch together to form peptides. These are the building blocks of proteins and, eventually, life. Strangely, the process requires the loss of a water molecule, which seems exceedingly improbable in a wet, aqueous, or oceanic environment. For life to form, it required water. However, it also needed space away from the water.
Cooks, an expert in mass spectrometry and early Earth chemistry, and his research team have uncovered the answer to the riddle: “Water isn’t wet everywhere.” On the margins, where the water droplet meets the atmosphere, extremely quick reactions can take place, transforming abiotic amino acids into the building blocks of life. Therefore, fertile landscapes for life’s potential evolution were in places where sea spray flies into the air and waves pound the land, or where fresh water burbles down a slope.
“The rates of reactions in droplets are anywhere from a hundred to a million times faster than the same chemicals reacting in bulk solution,” Cooks said.
The swift rates of these reactions make catalysts unnecessary, speeding up the reactions and, in the case of early Earth chemistry, making the evolution of life possible. Decades of scientific investigation have been focused on figuring out how this mechanism works. The secret of how life emerged on Earth can help scientists better understand why it happened and guide their search for life on other planets, or even moons.
Understanding how amino acids built themselves up into proteins and, eventually, life forms revolutionizes scientists’ understanding of chemical synthesis. That same chemistry may potentially help synthetic chemists identify and create novel medications and therapeutic treatments for illnesses by accelerating key processes.
SciTech Daily
The process is familiar by now: Show something slightly new in chemistry, wildly extrapolate its significance to the media, and make an extravagant claim suggesting that we now see how life can arise naturally.
The article said: “Chemists discover a mechanism for peptide-forming reactions to occur in water, which leads to proteins and so to life on Earth.” Peptides are short chains of amino acids; proteins are composed of much longer chains of amino acids. But for life, the specific sequence of amino acids in a protein is essential for it to fold properly into a functional three-dimensional configuration. The requirement of a particular sequence of amino acids endows the protein with vast amounts of information, far beyond what could be “chanced upon” by any natural process within the history of the entire universe. The superficial gloss of the article is promoting scientific nonsense.
Perpetually propping up a failed narrative is more important than simple, factual science reporting.
Where art thou, Science?
Andrew
I usually disagree with you, Caspian, but in this case I think you’re on to something. Here’s the essential point:
In the abstract to their article, they describe a process for forming a dipeptides from glycine and L-alanine, and that these dipeptides can promote the formation of tri- to hexapeptides.
They don’t address whether glycine or L-alanine would have been available in the prebiotic Earth, but rather more seriously, they don’t address the question of what a hexapeptide chain could do. This is more than just the folding problem (though it is that, too): my naive guess (granted, I don’t know any biochemistry) is that six amino acids is too short for the peptide to have any function.
So while it’s an interesting result that peptide chains between two and six amino acids could have formed on the prebiotic Earth, if the right amino acids were present in the requisite quantities, it doesn’t get us all that far.
Still, it’s a really cool little experiment! I wish I knew enough science to understand the methods section!
https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2212642119
I think the OP comments are vastly more provocative than the “claims” made by the team of chemists at Purdue. Caspian states:
The “essential point” of the research was not to explore “the specific sequence of amino acids.” It was to see if a dehydration substrate at the margins of an aqueous environment could
I’m not going to hold my breath for when this pivotal discovery manages to cure human diseases, like every other pivotal discovery claims to do
Well when you resort to poetry…
“The Fountain of Life”
“the Secret Ingredient for Building Life”
“This is a dramatic discovery.”
Sure. OK. If you say so. Again.
Andrew
Andrew,
I agree. Scientific discoveries have been one big yawn. I mean, how many times can they say “exciting” things followed by nothing? It was announced that a manned mission to Mars would launch in 2010. Nothing.
@Caspian
Has James Tour gotten a chance to to comment on this? I would like too see his take on the newest secret ingredient to life “surface tension”
What does the paper claim?
An ordinary study with no overstated provocative conclusions. It just has answered the question of how life began.
Nothing unusual to see here.
Aside: now if they can only figure out how the complex information arose in the DNA that specifies the amino acids. Should be in the next steps.
Oh, how did that translation mechanism arise? Probably next month we will get that.
———————
I would be interested if my understanding is correct. Essentially all they did is find a way for two amino acids to combine and then after that to form a slightly longer chain of amino acids. Certainly a legitimate study. But is that it?
@8
From what I read of the abstract, yes, that’s it. The interesting part is that they got two amino acids to combine in a way that (1) had never been demonstrated before and (2) could have theoretically taken place on the prebiotic Earth.
So, it’s not nothing. It certainly merits publication. It just doesn’t merit the hype.
Aaron @7
I am pretty sure, when Dr. Tour sees the original paper, it will end like this … see the link below… very similar situation – coupling amino acids in water…. Dr. Tour published the video a few days ago …. The OoL-researcher Bruce Lipschutz claimed, he is coupling amino acids, but it turned out, he wasn’t coupling amino acids….
Most probably these guys cheat in some similar way ….
You can’t trust these people….
https://uncommondescent.com/chemistry/tour-further-replies-to-his-critics/
Martin-R @10,
By the way, I posted the cooking recipe you wanted @30 here: 🙂
https://uncommondescent.com/biology/tufts-biologist-asks-where-is-anatomy-coded-in-living-systems/#comment-772822
-Q
When I was 12, my parents got me The Origin of Life Chemistry Set. From the back: Now that we know about The Building Blocks of Life – You Can Make it Too!! I was so excited.
I got the ingredients together while reading the instruction booklet:
One small container with the label: Amino Acids
One small container with the label: Catalysts
One small container with the label: Reactant Mixture
I combined the ingredients in a shallow dish and added warm water. A white-gray fog began to form right after. [Caution: Do not breathe in fog.] Then the mixture started to swirl but stopped abruptly. Finally, a yellow-brown film formed on the surface. This broke apart and fell to the bottom. At the bottom, a sort of fizzing action was occurring. The bottom had what looked like this light green sand with brown specks in it. It was fizzing and disappearing, like it was melting away. Then I saw it. At the very bottom, I could see a green shape. Was this… life? Well, after everything melted away, I realized it was a small plastic frog. I was so disappointed.
On the back of the booklet: For entertainment purposes only. For ages 12 – 15.
For everyone’s information, here’s James Tour’s video excellent rebuttal on this subject posted about an hour ago:
Dr. Tour EXPOSES Troll Behavior & Forgives Chemist in the Crossfire – Bruce Lipshutz, Part 02
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5PfBzQUjW8
Enjoy!
-Q
Awesome thank u
Dave does not hide the fact that he despises Christianity, and that he despises Dr. Tour for being a Christian.
And because Dave hates Christianity so much, and hates Dr. Tour for being a Christian, he repeatedly accused Dr. Tour of twisting and distorting the science simply in order to support his Christianity.
But alas, as Dr. Tour’s video series now makes clear, Dave is actually the one who is twisting and distorting the science just in order to support his naturalistic, even ‘anti-Christian’, religion.
If Dave had an ounce of integrity, and actually cared about the truth, he would make a video for his viewers and honestly admit that he was wrong in his claims, and perhaps, is he was man enough, even apologize to Dr. Tour.
But alas I, sadly, predict that Dave’s irrational hatred of Christianity will override any desire he may have to be honest, and Dave will let his scientific falsehoods continue on unabated. Shoot, if Dave is anything like the anti-Christian atheists we have here on UD, I predict he will repeat his scientific falsehoods in the future even though he has now been corrected.
At least Dave is correct in holding that religious presuppositions may make a person view some evidence favorably, whilst ignoring falsifying evidence. But alas, it turns out to be Dave himself who is the one who is guilty of being blinded by his apriori religious bias against Christianity.
Which is a crying shame. After all, contrary to what Dave may believe, it is Christianity itself, not Dave’s atheistic naturalism, which gave us modern science, even Chemistry, in the first place.
Verse:
Q, thanks; headlined. KF