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Growth of
Complexity
29 August 2016
Chirality: Mirror image is
different
Miller-Urey Experiment
Complexity
• Simple organic matter was readily available in space and
on Earth; Miller-Urey experiments show it easily forms
simple organic building blocks
• Life emerged spontaneously from SPONCH: If we could
conceive of some warm little pond (Darwin)
• Now, scientists trying to reconstruct first life, but it is not
so easy
• Perhaps RNA first, then DNA… but RNA is not easily
made, perhaps from primordial soup
• Drying ponds could concentrate nucleotides: reaction
rate increases with concentration. Freezing, too.
• Marginal lagoons and tidal pools are possible locations
• Polymerization creates longer structures, and maintins
chemically active ends
From Chemistry to Biology
• Minerals can be hosts, support organic
structures, select the template for
organization, catalyze reactions on their
surfaces
• DNA stores genetic info; RNA transcribes to
enzymes; they catalyze reactions
• We can’t replicate proteins without RNA; it is
simpler, perhaps it came first (RNA world).
• What came first, Hardware or Software?
• Tom Cech (CU Nobel Prize) showed RNA
can do both