back to article Scientists think they've found primordial goop whence life first sprang

A speculative new study suggests that nucleic acids, proteins and cell membranes – precursors to life Earth – first grew from a single kickstarting molecule named diamidophosphate. Its previous claim to fame was a 2008 barley fertilisation experiment, published in Biologia Plantarum, which found ammonium diamidophosphate …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Good story, well written

    Is all.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Good story, well written

      Are you suggesting that this is just a story? A ""speculative" set of ideas, which at this point have scientific value, but suggest very little in the reality of anything primordial?

      1. quxinot

        Re: Good story, well written

        Sure. Beats the hell out of hearing about another storage startup.

  2. Jason Bloomberg Silver badge
    Coat

    Yummy

    I am wondering what would happen if one poured it over a plate of spaghetti.

    The one with multiple arms for noodly appendages.

  3. Chazmon
    Alien

    Sounds like we have cracked one of the essential components for planet seeding. Good work

    1. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

      Sounds like we have cracked one of the essential components for planet seeding.

      Now all we need is to wait for several hundred million years to make it work..

  4. Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

    Not a chance mate...

    "On a philosophical level, if we understand how we became, and where we came from, it may provide solutions to how we should move forward and where we can go."

    Not a chance mate. Too many cat videos to watch.

  5. james 68

    Original experiment was on the fertilization of barley huh? What are the odds they were studying beer production and accidentally discovered this while just trying to find a way to get hammered?

    1. Tom 7

      Re: Barley

      There are some surprisingly well thought out theories that suggest that the making of beer is what brought man to civilisation - the complexity of the process was well rewarded by the end result and accidentally kicked off all sorts of shit.

      1. frank ly

        Re: Barley

        That's only if you accidentally drink some of the sediment, as I once found out.

        1. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge
          Pint

          Re: Barley

          That's only if you accidentally drink some of the sediment, as I once found out.

          Some people pay good money for a similar experience

          https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/12/20/soylents_key_ingredient_cut_off_by_supplier

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Barley

        Yep, beer and bread and it's those that were used by by women to kick off the whole agricultural revolution.

  6. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken
    Pint

    So, best case we learn more about how life on earth took off, worst case we learn more about fertilizer. Both good.

  7. unwarranted triumphalism

    Idle speculation

    No real answers

    1. Throatwarbler Mangrove Silver badge
      FAIL

      Pointless critcism

      No real insight

      1. unwarranted triumphalism

        Re: Pointless critcism

        There you go then, no criticism is allowed. How does science work on your planet?

        1. Francis Boyle Silver badge

          Re: Pointless critcism

          Well I can speak for Ray but on my planet science starts with "That's interesting".

  8. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Unhappy

    Interesting idea. Now how difficult is it to make DAP given the environment of the early Earth?

    But yes having fewer first ingredients (or first catalysts) that make more of the precursors in one go does make it potentially a more likely route.

    But in fact there is no reason why there has to be a single route to day zero.

    I could imagine a most probable (of several possible) route and a most successful over time but insisting on a single path from raw chemicals to "life" seems like a human desire to reduce complexity. The world is not designed for human comprehension. If it were many of the processes we have studied and (eventually) understood would have been much simpler.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Go check the smokers on the bottom of the world

    The ones at 30,000 feet where it is perpetually cold and dark. See what comes out of them, some combination of 'stuff' coming out is your starting point, I'll wager.

    The reason I think that way is because those environments are very stable, and would provide time for chemical changes to happen that lead to life. The old ideas of a pool of goop on the surface getting struck by lightning just don't make sense. Even if "something happens" in that pool of goop, it has to deal with a lot of changes to its environment - day/night, temperature fluctuations, precipitation, storms, probably volcanoes since it was rather early in the Earth's life. Lots of environmental change is great for evolutionary change once life is established, but it just doesn't seem to make a lot of sense for getting it established in the first place. You probably want somewhere that's pretty much undisturbed for a very long time.

    Unless life arrived on a comet, of course...

    1. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: Go check the smokers on the bottom of the world

      "perpetually cold and dark"

      Not at all cold around those smokers - and a very nice energy gradient to work with no matter what temperature the surrounding water was (FWIW uber-cold ocean depths are a relatively recent phenomenon associated with ice ages)

      As for life, there's a huge fuzzy area between "organic chemistry" and "life" where you might have a lot of difficulty distinguishing between "interesting chemistry" and "alive". Comets or no comets, cells of any kind (prokarotes or archea or whatever) didn't just spontaneously assemble from "primordial goop" and it's quite likely that there are a multiplicity of origins mixed up in the assembly.

      1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
        Coat

        "As for life, there's a huge fuzzy area between "organic chemistry" and "life" "

        Yes.

        The borderline between "Really clever self catalyzing molecule" and "has a reproductive cycle"

        Very clever chemistry or very simple life form?

        The answer is of course "yes."

  10. jake Silver badge

    Mmmmmmmm ...

    ... soup.

  11. Winkypop Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    Science for the win!

    Back it every time.

    PS: Can you eat it?

    1. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: Science for the win!

      "PS: Can you eat it?"

      Only if it doesn't eat you first.

  12. Milton

    '"The 'simplest' ideas are typically the most desirably [sic] as they suggest pathways to life that are more plausible," said Brian Cafferty, a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.'

    Actually, you need to be careful about that assumption. First, "simple" in a chemistry sense does not necessarily mean "most probable". Sometimes the overall energy changes make a complex reaction more likely than simple one. Second, "simple" certainly does not necessarily mean "most enduring" in the sense that its results will last long enough for other downstream reactions to occur reliably.

    I suspect you'd have no trouble concocting a plausible primordial gloop and watching dozens of high-probability "simple" reactions lead absolutely nowhere for years; whereas a complex one, possibly of vastly lesser likelihood in your test environment (but, in statistical terms, inevitable over the course of, say, a million years) could spawn all sorts of highly durable and multiplying goodies.

    This is another way of saying that one thing we absolutely cannot replicate in a test tube is time. No one knows whether self-replicating molecules occurred within the first Suitable Gloop Year or the ten millionth one. Because we cannot replicate time, but we desperately want results, it's dangerously easy to slip into the trap of aiming for results that can only fit in our tiny timeframe: which leads promptly to seductively wrong assumptions about "simplicity", because we're likely to see only the high-probability "simple" reactions.

    (Worse: if the experiment spectacularly succeeds, but the initial "seed" reaction is later analysed as freakishly unlikely, e.g. 1 in 10^20 probability—does that mean that (a) it's a lousy candidate for the origin of life, (b) the PhD candidate cheated, (c) it "proves" life could be kickstarted with a trllion times as much gloop and ten million years of stirring? In short, we'll only prove practical and likely origins for life if they are so amazingly probable that we can replicate them with tiny test samples and infinitesimal time frames. Anything else leaves the door swinging wide open, still ...)

    1. Alan Brown Silver badge

      "life could be kickstarted with a trllion times as much gloop and ten million years of stirring?"

      A bit like the success rate of terrorists blowing up the houses of parliament, "it only needs to get kickstarted once", so I wouldn't discount the possibility of option C

    2. John Smith 19 Gold badge
      Coat

      "you'd have no trouble concocting a plausible primordial gloop"

      In fact various groups, over decades have done exactly that, usually using a mixture of gases.

      One particularly interesting effort bubbled them through volcanic sand and got a mix of proteins out (although no one tried to eat them).

      A book called "Synthetic Food" by a Dr Magnus Pyke has proved most entertaining on this.

  13. unwarranted triumphalism

    Were they there?

    No.

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