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Study Suggests Life On Earth Sprang From Borax Minerals
Science Daily ^ | 09 January 2004 | Staff

Posted on 01/10/2004 8:05:30 AM PST by PatrickHenry

GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- Researchers at the University of Florida say they have shown that minerals were key to some of the initial processes that formed life on Earth. Specifically, a borax-containing mineral known as colemanite helps convert organic molecules found in interstellar dust clouds into a sugar, known as ribose, central to the genetic material called RNA. This announcement provides a key step toward solving the 3-billion-year-old mystery of how life on Earth began. The findings will appear in Friday's issue of the journal Science. Steven Benner, Alonso Ricardo, Matthew Carrigan and Alison Olcott built on a famous experiment done 50 years earlier by Stanley Miller that is found in many textbooks. In 1953, Miller showed that electric sparks in a primitive atmosphere made amino acids, the building blocks of proteins.

Miller's experiment failed to identify sugars that were needed for genetic material, however. "The sugar ribose can be formed from interstellar precursors under prebiotic conditions," said Benner, who led the research funded by NASA, the National Science Foundation and The Agouron Institute in Pasadena, Calif. "But ribose is too unstable to survive under Miller's conditions." Ribose, like most sugars, turns into tar if not handled carefully. "It is like baking a cake too long," said Benner, a UF distinguished professor of chemistry and anatomy and cell biology. In 1995, Miller gave up trying to make ribose prebiotically, writing: "The first genetic material could not have contained ribose or other sugars because of their instability."

Benner, who also is a member of NASA's Astrobiology Institute, did the first experiments as an instructor at an international geobiology course last summer funded by the Agouron Institute and held at the University of Southern California Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies. "We asked two questions. First, what simple organic molecules might have been present on early Earth as starting materials to form ribose? Then, what might have been present on early Earth to capture ribose and keep it from burning up like overcooked cake?" Benner said.

To identify simple organic molecules that might be the starting materials, Benner turned to compounds known to exist in interstellar dust, such as formaldehyde, used to preserve tissue. "Formaldehyde may not seem to be a good starting point for the life that we know," he said. "But it is simple. With only one carbon atom, one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms, there is a lot of formaldehyde to work with in the cosmos."

Benner and his team showed that formaldehyde, with other interstellar compounds, could form ribose and other sugars when treated in the presence of base materials such as lime, a material used to adjust the pH level of lawns, among other things. Lime was effective, but the ribose decomposed soon after it was formed.

Recognizing that ribose had a particular chemical structure that allowed it to bind to minerals containing the element boron, they turned to another substance called colemanite. "Colemanite is a mineral containing borate found in Death Valley," he said. "Without it, ribose turns into a brown tar. With it, ribose and other sugars emerge as clean products." Benner then showed similar reactions with other borate minerals, including ulexite and kernite, which is more commonly known as borax.

Benner and his team are the first researchers to succeed in making significant amounts of ribose under these early conditions.

Joseph Piccirilli, a biological chemist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the University of Chicago, said Benner's work "has simplicity and brilliance."

"Organic chemists have long known that borate complexes with compounds like ribose," Piccirilli said, "and prebiotic scientists have long believed that minerals on the early Earth played an important role in the origin of life." Until now, "no one has put the two ideas together," he said.

"We are not claiming that this is how life started," Benner stressed. "We are saying that we have demonstrated a recipe to make a key part of life without any biochemical machinery. The more recipes of this type that can be found, the more clues we have about how life could have actually gotten started on the primitive Earth."

While best classified as basic science, the work has practical biological and medical value. "Curiously, thinking about how life originated and what form it might take on other planets helps us design new tools for disease diagnostics and therapy," Benner said. Diagnostic tools enabled by Benner's work seeking alternative life forms are used today in the clinic to monitor the load of the viruses that cause AIDS and hepatitis C.

The work also complements other research Benner is conducting that focuses on ancient forms of life on Earth. In a September report in Nature, Benner and his collaborators deduced the structure of a protein found in a bacterium that lived several billion years ago and resurrected the ancient protein. By studying it in the laboratory, the group inferred the ancient bacteria lived in a hot spring at about 150 degrees Fahrenheit.

With the prebiotic experiments, Benner said, "we are working forward in time, from the origin of the planet to the first life. With experiments with ancient proteins, we work backwards in time, from the modern world to the most primitive of bacteria." The group's goal, he said, is to have the two meet in the middle.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Miscellaneous; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: 20muleteam; borax; crevolist; darwin; evolution; godsgravesglyphs; originoflife; origins
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Everybody be nice. And try to avoid jokes about Reagan and Death Valley Days.
1 posted on 01/10/2004 8:05:31 AM PST by PatrickHenry
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To: *crevo_list; VadeRetro; jennyp; Junior; longshadow; RadioAstronomer; Physicist; LogicWings; ...
PING. [This ping list is for the evolution side of evolution threads, and sometimes for other science topics. FReepmail me to be added or dropped.]
2 posted on 01/10/2004 8:06:21 AM PST by PatrickHenry (Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.)
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To: All
Rank Location Receipts Donors/Avg Freepers/Avg Monthlies
Kenya




20.00
1

Thanks for donating to Free Republic!

Move your locale up the leaderboard!

3 posted on 01/10/2004 8:06:42 AM PST by Support Free Republic (I'd rather be sleeping. Let's get this over with so I can go back to sleep!)
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To: PatrickHenry
Guess that's why I'm so bright and my skin is soft and white.
4 posted on 01/10/2004 8:07:29 AM PST by DallasMike
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Comment #5 Removed by Moderator

To: PatrickHenry
And try to avoid jokes about Reagan and Death Valley Days.

There went a lot of this thread's potential! Especially for us old farts who really remember Ronnie touting 20-mule-team BoraxoTM.

6 posted on 01/10/2004 8:14:00 AM PST by VadeRetro
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To: All
Someone was going to do it, so it may as well be me:


7 posted on 01/10/2004 8:15:07 AM PST by PatrickHenry (Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.)
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To: VadeRetro
Tales of the Old West w/the Gipper ping.
8 posted on 01/10/2004 8:16:22 AM PST by Eric in the Ozarks (so, it dates me into geezerhood. You should see my gun collection.)
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To: VadeRetro
I'm trying to run a mature thread, but I guess I can't fight it:


9 posted on 01/10/2004 8:17:19 AM PST by PatrickHenry (Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.)
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Comment #10 Removed by Moderator

To: PatrickHenry
It's taken about 50 years to find a barely possible way in which Miller's suggestion about how life arose spontaneously from the protoplasmic soup could possibly have worked. And after 150 years they're still trying to find a single instance that would confirm Darwin's theory of general evolution.

Talk about religious faith in an impossible dream.
11 posted on 01/10/2004 8:20:40 AM PST by Cicero (Marcus Tullius)
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12 posted on 01/10/2004 8:21:24 AM PST by Momaw Nadon (Goals for 2004: Re-elect President Bush, over 60 Republicans in the Senate, and a Republican House.)
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To: Eric in the Ozarks
"Tales of the Old West w/the Gipper ping."

I seem to remember Reagan taking over from "The Old Cowboy" without an explanation. Can anybody older than me verify that the show was originally hosted by a geezer in a cowboy hat?

Geezer replaced by Gipper. I made a funny!
13 posted on 01/10/2004 8:22:10 AM PST by Poser
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To: PatrickHenry

14 posted on 01/10/2004 8:24:30 AM PST by VadeRetro
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To: Poser
Can anybody older than me verify that the show was originally hosted by a geezer in a cowboy hat?

I remember him. "This is ????? [What did he call himself?] sayin' 'So long!'"

15 posted on 01/10/2004 8:26:09 AM PST by VadeRetro
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To: Poser
Who knew a twenty mule train was linked into my DNA?
16 posted on 01/10/2004 8:26:53 AM PST by blackdog (I'm hooked on phonics but smoking it is not so easy.)
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To: VadeRetro
I remember him. "This is ????? [What did he call himself?] sayin' 'So long!'"


I'm sure it was "The Old Cowboy sayin' so long."

I guess he was older than we thought. I'll have to do a search.
17 posted on 01/10/2004 8:28:36 AM PST by Poser
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To: Poser
I remember the guy...he came after Reagan left the show.
18 posted on 01/10/2004 8:32:01 AM PST by Eric in the Ozarks
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To: Poser
It was The Old Ranger
http://www.deathvalleydays.com/
19 posted on 01/10/2004 8:33:36 AM PST by Poser
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To: PatrickHenry
That stuff was great!
20 posted on 01/10/2004 8:35:16 AM PST by thesummerwind (Like painted kites, those days and nights, they went flyin' by)
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