Biological Sciences
Oparin-Haldane Hypothesis
The Oparin-Haldane Hypothesis proposes that life on Earth originated from simple organic compounds that formed in the early atmosphere and oceans. According to this hypothesis, these compounds gradually evolved into more complex molecules, eventually leading to the emergence of life. This hypothesis laid the foundation for the study of abiogenesis, the process by which life arises from non-living matter.
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11 Key excerpts on "Oparin-Haldane Hypothesis"
- Michael Ruse(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
Meanwhile, the Oparin-Haldane Hypothesis pertain- ing to the synthesis and chemical evolution of organic com- pounds in the reducing primordial atmosphere and in the primordial soup provided the framework for the beginning of the empirical study of the origin of life. In the early 1950s, on the basis of the Oparin-Haldane Hypothesis, the young American doctoral student Stanley Miller, guided by his men- tor Harold Urey at the University of Chicago, simulated in a glass apparatus the primordial atmosphere and ocean. The Miller-Urey landmark experiments, in which out of basic inorganic chemicals the synthesis of amino acids, the build- ing blocks of proteins, and other organic compounds was achieved, inspired numerous laboratories to explore prebiotic chemistry and the origin of life (Fry 2000, 79–83) (Fig. 38.4). EVO LU T I O N P R I O R TO L I F E : I S I T P O S S I B L E ? The challenge facing researchers since the 1950s was not only to account for the prebiotic synthesis of the relevant building blocks but also to understand their subsequent organization. It was Darwin’s (1859, 186–89) realization that the mechanism of natural selection, based on the processes of reproduction and mutation, was the major natural means to overcome the huge improbabilities involved in producing an organized complex biological system. Still unaware of the molecular basis of life, Darwin offered this explanation of the evolution of adaptively organized living forms as an alternative to Divine Design upheld by natural theology. As we saw, early twentieth-century pioneers contended that the first living systems on earth were the product of a gradual evolutionary process. Not only did they suggest hypo- thetical intermediary links in this evolutionary chain; they also as well as to the new, unique features of these systems. This philosophical message was embodied in their empirical sce- narios.
eBook - ePubInvestigating Seafloors and Oceans
From Mud Volcanoes to Giant Squid
- Antony Joseph(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Elsevier(Publisher)
http://physicsoftheuniverse.com/scientists_oparin.html ):•There is no fundamental difference between a living organism and lifeless matter, and the complex combination of manifestations and properties so characteristic of life must have arisen in the process of the evolution of matter.• The infant Earth had possessed a strongly reducing atmosphere, containing methane, ammonia, hydrogen, and water vapor, which were the raw materials for the evolution of life.•As the molecules grew and increased in complexity, new properties came into being and a new colloidal-chemical order was imposed on the simpler organic chemical relations, determined by the spatial arrangement and mutual relationship of the molecules.• Even in this early process, competition, speed of growth, struggle for existence, and natural selection determined the form of material organization, which has become characteristic of living things.•Living organisms are open systems, and so must receive energy and materials from outside themselves, and are not therefore limited by the Second Law of Thermodynamics (which is applicable only to closed systems in which energy is not replenished).Oparin showed how organic chemicals in solution may spontaneously form droplets and layers, and outlined a way in which basic organic chemicals might form into microscopic localized systems (possible precursors of cells) from which primitive living things could develop. He suggested that different types of coacervates might have formed in the Earth's primordial ocean and, subsequently, been subject to a selection process, eventually leading to life.
eBook - PDFLife's Origin
The Beginnings of Biological Evolution
- J. William Schopf(Author)
- 2002(Publication Date)
- University of California Press(Publisher)
New discoveries notwithstanding, it was the synergistic interaction of concepts proposed by two particularly creative scientists—Mendeleev in chemistry and Charles Darwin ( 1809–1882 ) in biology—that led Oparin to his idea of how life began. Oparin’s final scientific paper (Oparin 1986 ), published six years after his death, critically reviews various hypotheses of the origin of life. And his words still resonate: We can conclude that the different forms of life are not the result of a process having a determined finality developed a priori by a creative plan, nor are they the result of a chance fortuitous act. Life emerged as the result of natural evolutionary processes, as a new form of movement of matter during its process of development. The study of this process allows us to know, with a scientific base, the essence of life and its qualitative difference from the world of inorganic matter. In the late 1920 s, a hypothesis very similar to Oparin’s was developed independently by the English biologist J. B. S. Haldane. He and Oparin proposed that the origin of life on Earth was preceded by a period of nonbiological molecular evolution. The Oparin-Haldane Hypothesis as-sumes that, during and after Earth’s formation, simple carbon com-pounds were transformed into increasingly more complex ones by means of heat and solar radiation. In addition, Oparin proposed that, after the production of organic compounds of fairly high molecular weight, a phase separation occurred, resulting in formation of micro-scopic organic droplets (colloidal coacervates ). These coacervates were 16 John Oró able to selectively accumulate simple organic compounds from the environment, thereby giving rise to chemically coupled reactions of in-creasing complexity—reactions that were, in important respects, simi-lar to those of living systems. This phase separation made primitive competition possible and established a type of natural selection among pre-life, protobiont droplets.
eBook - ePub- Andrew H. Knoll, Don E. Canfield, Kurt O. Konhauser, Andrew H. Knoll, Don E. Canfield, Kurt O. Konhauser(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Wiley-Blackwell(Publisher)
et al ., 2009), surely the first cells on Earth arose in a watery environment. Life also needs a ready source of energy. The radiant energy of the Sun provides the most obvious supply for life today, but bolts of lightning, impacts of asteroids, Earth’s inner heat and the chemical energy of minerals have also been invoked as life-triggering energy sources. And, third, life depends on a variety of chemical elements. All living organisms consume atoms of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, with a bit of sulfur and phosphorus and other elements as well. These elements combine in graceful geometries to form essential biomolecules.In spite of the intrinsic importance of the topic, it was not until the 1920s that such scientific speculation took a more formal guise. Most notable among the modern school of origin theorists was the Russian biochemist Alexander Oparin (Oparin, 1924). In 1924, while still in his 20s, Oparin elaborated on the idea that life arose from a body of water that gradually became enriched in organic molecules – what was to become known as the ‘primordial soup’ (Haldane, 1929). Somehow, he posited, these molecules clustered together and became self-organized into a chemical system that could duplicate itself.Many of Oparin’s postulates were echoed in 1929 by the independent ideas of British biochemist and geneticist J.B.S. Haldane, whose brief, perceptive article focused on the production of large carbon-based molecules under the influence of the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation (Haldane, 1929). Given such a productive chemical environment, Haldane envisioned the first living objects as self-replicating, specialized molecules.17.3.1 The Miller–Urey Experiment
Oparin and Haldane offered original and intriguing ideas that were subject to experimental testing, but Oparin and his contemporaries didn’t try to replicate experimentally the prebiotic formation of biomolecules. Not until the years after World War II were the landmark experiments of Miller and Urey devised (Miller and Urey, 1959; Wills and Bada, 2000). They mimicked aspects of Earth’s early surface by sealing water and simple gases into a tabletop glass apparatus and subjecting the contents to electric sparks, while gently boiling the water and circulating the contents (Fig. 17.1
No longer available |Learn more- (Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Learning Press(Publisher)
In his The Origin of Life , Oparin proposed that the spontaneous generation of life that had been attacked by Louis Pasteur, did in fact occur once, but was now impossible because the conditions found in the early earth had changed, and the presence of living organisms would immediately consume any spontaneously generated organism. Oparin argued that a primeval soup of organic molecules could be created in an oxygen-less atmosphere through the action of sunlight. These would combine in ever-more com- ___________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ___________________________ plex fashions until they formed coacervate droplets. These droplets would grow by fusion with other droplets, and reproduce through fission into daughter droplets, and so have a primitive metabolism in which those factors which promote cell integrity survive, and those that do not become extinct. Many modern theories of the origin of life still take Oparin's ideas as a starting point. Around the same time, J. B. S. Haldane suggested that the Earth's pre-biotic oceans–very diff-erent from their modern counterparts–would have formed a hot dilute soup in which organic compounds could have formed. This idea was called biopoiesis or biopoesis , the process of living matter evolving from self-replicating but nonliving molecules. Early conditions Morse and MacKenzie have suggested that oceans may have appeared first in the Hadean eon, as soon as two hundred million years (200 Ma) after the Earth was formed, in a hot 100 °C (212 °F) reducing environment, and that the pH of about 5.8 rose rapidly towards neutral. This has been supported by Wilde who has pushed the date of the zircon crystals found in the metamorphosed quartzite of Mount Narryer in Western Australia, previously thought to be 4.1–4.2 Ga, to 4.404 Ga. This means that oceans and continental crust existed within 150 Ma of Earth's for-mation. Despite this, the Hadean environment was one highly hazardous to life.
No longer available |Learn more- (Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- The English Press(Publisher)
Extraterrestrial origins–delivery by objects (e.g. carbonaceous chondrites) or gravitational attraction of organic molecules or primitive life-forms from space Recently, estimates of these sources suggest that the heavy bombardment before 3.5 Ga within the early atmosphere made available quantities of organics comparable to those produced by other energy sources. Soup theory today: Miller's experiment and subsequent work Biochemist Robert Shapiro has summarized the Primordial Soup theory of Oparin and Haldane in its mature form as follows: 1. The early Earth had a chemically reducing atmosphere. 2. This atmosphere, exposed to energy in various forms, produced simple organic compounds (monomers). 3. These compounds accumulated in a soup, which may have been concentrated at various locations (Shorelines, oceanic vents etc.). 4. By further transformation, more complex organic polymers— and ultimately life— developed in the soup. Regarding the reducing atmosphere Whether the mixture of gases used in the Miller–Urey experiment truly reflects the atmospheric content of early Earth is a controversial topic. Other less reducing gases produce a lower yield and variety. It was once thought that appreciable amounts of molecular oxygen were present in the prebiotic atmosphere, which would have essentially prevented the formation of organic molecules; however, the current scientific consensus is that such was not the case. Regarding monomer formation One of the most important pieces of experimental support for the soup theory came in 1953. A graduate student, Stanley Miller and his professor, Harold Urey, performed an experiment that demonstrated how organic molecules could have spontaneously formed from inorganic precursors, under conditions like those posited by the Oparin-Haldane Hypothesis. The now-famous Miller–Urey experiment used a highly reduced mixture of gases–methane, ammonia and hydrogen–to form basic organic monomers, such as amino acids.
eBook - PDFWhat is Life? On Earth and Beyond
On Earth and Beyond
- Andreas Losch(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
No form of life is known that does not require liquid water. Organic molecules produced by chemical com- binations of carbonated molecules present in the primitive atmosphere would have been deposited and assembled in the primitive ocean to gradually produce living organisms appearing in the prebiotic soup. This model (described by Alexander Ivanovitch Oparin and John Burdon Sanderson Haldane) has led in recent decades to a large number of experiments, frequently with spectacular results, such as the production of amino acids by Stanley Miller in 1953 starting from gaseous molecules present in the primeval atmosphere, then the synthesis of purine bases of nucleic acids by Juan Oro thanks to the pentamerization of cyanhydric acid under UV irradiation, and then the template-directed synthesis by Leslie Orgel describing the first steps of the replication of nucleic acid fragments without the intervention of enzymes, as well as the synthesis of diverse macromolecules in hydrothermal conditions, etc. One cannot summarize here the huge number of successful exper- iments performed since the pioneering ideas of Oparin. The theory of the “surface-world” initially proposed by Desmond Bernal (1951), then by Graham Cairns-Smith (1966) involves mineral surfaces, such as clays. According to Cairns-Smith, the very first replicative system must have been 1 Reflections on Origins, Life, and the Origins of Life 25 mineral or geochemical (1982); this could have meant crystals on which, and thanks to which, the present organic genetic system could have developed and would have “learned” to replicate. This genetic “take-over” occupies a central position in the process of evolution. It is what we observe with molecules such as PNA (pep- tide nucleic acids), HNA (hexitol nucleic acids), TNA (threose nucleic acids), and XNA (xeno nucleic acids), which are artificial constructs and are good templates for template-directed synthesis (Pinheiro & Holliger, 2012).
- B. Nagy, R. Weber, Jose Maria Guerrero, M. Schidlowski, José M. Guerrero(Authors)
- 2000(Publication Date)
- Elsevier Science(Publisher)
The panspermia theory suggests the continuous universal distri- bution of life, but transfers the problem of the origin of life to other unknown planets or environments. Since it does not deal directly with the real problem of biopoiesis it cannot be considered as a theory of the origin of life. Some investigators favor the process by which rudimentary transcriptional EARLY EVOLUTION OF LIFE It must be admitted that the study of the early phases of biological evolu- tion is still highly speculative (Miller and Orgel, 1974). This situation exists in spite of the fact that the problem can be approached by various techniques, including micropaleontology and comparative studies of the complexity of metabolic pathways, as well as by studies on macromolecular sequence data of proteins, DNA, and 16s r RNA, the so-called “molecular living fossils”. The discussion that follows is, therefore, tentative and is meant only to brief- ly illustrate some of the possibilities in this field, and indicate some recent developments, including carbon isotopic measurements of the Precambrian 164 and studies on methanogenic bacteria, which, as has been suggested recently (Hayes, 1983), were probably present in the Precambrian. At the outset there seems to be a general consensus that the very first orga- nisms on the primitive Earth must have grown and reproduced at the expense of the prebiotic soup. They must have been relatively simple anaerobic hetero- trophic organisms which depended on the prebiotically synthesized organic matter, both as a source of carbon and energy. It is possible that the prebiotic synthetic processes overlapped for some time with the existence of early life. However, sooner or later the demand for essential components from the pre- biotic soup must have exceeded the supply. This constituted the first material and energy crisis that life experienced on this Earth.
eBook - PDF- A. I. Oparin(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Academic Press(Publisher)
This was greatly aided by the work of several astronomers, physicists, chemists, and geologists. In this connection, one must note Urey's book Planets, their Origin and Development (86) and Bernal's Physical Basis of Life (87). Solution of the problem of the further evolution of the primary hydrocarbon compounds on our planet, their transformations under the *In J. Bernal's book The Origin of Life published in 1967 a complete English translation of this book is given as an appendix. 1. SHORT HISTORY 35 conditions of the ancient hydrosphere and atmosphere of Earth were greatly aided by numerous experiments reproducing these conditions in a laboratory environment. These experiments were successfully begun by the ^American scientist Miller (88) who obtained amino acids - those most important components of the protein molecule — by subjecting a gas mixture consisting of methane, ammonia, hydrogen, and water vapor to electric discharges. Analogous syntheses of amino acids were carried out by Pavlovskaya and Pasynskii (89) by the action of ultraviolet light. Subsequently, similar investigations were carried out by numerous scientists in several countries of the world. We will describe these investigations in further accounts. Here it is only necessary to note that a large number of differing substances, as well as their polymers, anal-ogous to proteins, nucleic acids, etc. were synthesized from primitive hydrocarbon compounds. In addition to this, a broad investigation was made of the primary formation from these polymers of multi-molecular formations, the emergence of primitive metabolism in them, etc. In the middle of our century a decisive crisis in the relationship of naturalists to the problem of the origin of life has occurred. Earlier this problem was, if it can be thus expressed, prohibited; the scientific literature devoted to it at that time was extremely scanty and in most cases was only general and speculative in character.
eBook - PDF- Cornelius A. Tobias, John H. Lawrence, Cornelius A. Tobias, John H. Lawrence(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Academic Press(Publisher)
I think we must leave the idea of the nature of living materials, now, and go on to describe how such a chemical system (physico-chemical system) could have arisen on the earth and then examine other astral bodies to see if there is any possibility (or hope) that such simi-lar properties might have occurred elsewhere. ORIGIN OF LIFE ON EARTH AND ELSEWHERE 319 II. T H E PRIMITIVE ATMOSPHERE We know a great deal more today, I might say, about the nature of the fundamental living organism—the actual physicochemical processes, the construction and interaction of these molecular particles in a living organism—than we did even 10 years ago. While one can make changes each time this discussion occurs as to what we must look for, there are certain rather primitive requirements which always appear. We must, somehow, devise ways and means of producing rather complex forms from relatively simple ones. We have every reason to suppose that the primitive earth had on its surface only simple organic molecules. If it was a reducing atmosphere (and it seems to be generally agreed now that this is true), most of the carbon was very largely in the form of methane or carbon monoxide (some of it could have been carbon dioxide but the contention now is that most of the carbon was reduced), the nitrogen was mostly in the form of ammonia, there was lots of hydrogen, and the oxygen was all (or very nearly all) in the form of water. These, then, presumably, were the primitive molecules of the primeval earth, and from these we must now devise a way of constructing the more complex materials. It was at this point that we first began to seek experimental ways of doing this in the laboratory. This was the first point of contact with experiment that I, at least, was able to make roughly 10 years ago.
eBook - PDF- Chris Impey, Jonathan Lunine, José Funes(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
Until this paradox is resolved by some appropriate combination of chemistry and environment, the “origins” problem will not be solved. Synthesizing life from scratch Of course, even if a laboratory experiment does generate RNA from plau- sible prebiotic precursors, the result need not offer us a constraint-by-origin view of what forms life might take universally. After all, molecules other than RNA might be able to simultaneously support genetics and catalysis. These too might be able to straddle non-Darwinian and Darwinian chemistry in a way that leads to their own form of life, possibly quite different from the life we know on Earth, and possibly in environments quite different from those found on early Earth. This observation suggests a fourth approach to understanding life as a universal. This approach, represented by the right wedge in Figure 2.1, comes under the title “synthetic biology.” Synthesis, especially in chemistry, reflects first a definition of understanding as an ability to create. If we truly understand chemical systems that support Darwinian evolution, we should be able to construct one of our own in the laboratory. If the NASA definition-theory of life is on point, this artificial system should be able to re-create all of the properties that we value in life. Conversely, if we cannot build life from scratch, then we must not understand completely what life is. Further, de novo synthesis provides us with candidate Darwinian molecules that are different in structure from those found in terran biology. Through syn- thesis, we can ask: What kinds of molecules other than standard DNA and RNA might support Darwinian evolution? This takes us in the direction of universality, at least as far as our imagination and synthetic technology allow. Underlying the famous double helix of Watson and Crick (Watson and Crick 1953) are two simple rules for genetics, rules that describe complementarity between two DNA strands.
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