Did Life Evolve in Ice? | Arctic & Antarctic | DISCOVER Magazine
Over a quarter-century, the frozen ammonia-cyanide blend had coalesced into the molecules of life: nucleobases, the building blocks of RNA and DNA, and amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. The vial’s contents would support a new account of how life began on Earth and would arouse both surprise and skepticism around the world.
Origin of life research is a fascinating part of synthetic biology. In order to get a better idea of what happened so many billions of years ago, researchers have to actually attempt to re-create life’s building blocks in the lab (or fail to do so, as the experiments disproving spontaneous generation in the 17th century did so convincingly). This experiment (which I just learned about thanks to wikipedia!) shows that some organic molecules could be generated even without the high energy inputs of the original Miller-Urey experiments, with totally awesome implications for astrobiology.
Anyway, I anticipate a lot more posts about origin of life research in the near future, as I am going to be giving a lecture on it quite soon. I’d love to hear any comments and questions you may have as I develop my ideas!
