Scientists are getting closer to solving the chemical puzzle of the origin of life

For a long time people wondered how life began after the earth was formed billions of years ago. Now, chemists have partially unlocked the recipe by creating a complex compound essential to all life in the lab.

Just like making the ingredients for a cake, scientists have successfully created a compound that is critical to metabolism in everyone living cells, essential for energy production and regulation. A pathway that had eluded scientists for decades involved relatively simple molecules that were likely present in Tierra primitives that have been combined at room temperature for months.

This discovery supports the idea that many of the key components of life could have arisen at the beginning at the same time and combined living cells.

“Why do we have life? “Why do the rules of chemistry mean that life here looks the way it does?” he said. Matej Powner, lead author of the research paper. Those are “just the most fantastic questions we could answer,” he added.

Although organisms differ greatly in appearance, they are made up of the same basic chemical building blocks, the so-called primary metabolites, which are directly involved in cell growth and development. Examples include amino acids that help make proteins and the nucleotides that make them ARN and ADN.

A new laboratory experiment focused on the origin of another primary metabolite: coenzyme A, which is the core of metabolism in all areas of life (as one of its many functions). For example, the compound plays an essential role in releasing energy from carbohydrates, fats, and proteins in organisms that require oxygen, but also serves metabolic functions in life forms that do not oxygenlike many bacteria.

specifically Owner and his team sought to recreate a particular fragment of the molecule coenzyme A he called pantetheine. She is a working arm coenzyme A, is often transferred and allows other chemical reactions to take place in our body. This term is called a cofactor and acts as an “on” switch; without her coenzyme it would be unusable.

“All of our metabolic processes depend on a small subset of these cofactors,” the biologist said Aaron Goldman, who did not participate in the study. “This has led scientists to suggest that these cofactors themselves may have preceded larger, more complex enzymes during the origin and early evolution of life,” he added.

Some researchers, Goldman said, have suggested that primitive life forms may have used it pantetheine to store energy before developing the larger, more complex energy currency that cells use today.

If so, the mystery remained: Where did he come from pantetheine?

“We can’t turn back time. We cannot go back to the origin of life. We cannot find samples from this time frame,” Professor Powner stated University College London. “Our only chance to really get to the bottom of this problem is to rebuild it, start from scratch, reengineer the cell and understand what it takes to build an organism,” he said.

Build pantetheine It was a challenging task. First, the molecule was “strange” by biochemistry standards, he said. It closely resembled the structure of peptides (chains of amino acids) used to build proteins, but it had many odd features—unusual elements that were in strange places—that gave it a more complicated structure.

The compound is so strange that scientists previously suggested it was too complex to be made from basic molecules. Others have tried to create pantetheine and they failed because they thought it was not even present at the beginnings of life. Many scientists theorized that biology would have created a simple version of it that would have evolved over time to become more complicated—like building a cabin and later turning it into a mansion.

However, the team entered the lab. They focused mainly on the use of materials that could be in abundance primitive earthsuch as hydrogen cyanide and water. Each of the first steps of the reaction took about a day, but the last step took 60 days, the longest reaction in the lab. Owner when he did The team eventually stopped the response “partly because we got bored,” he said. But the result was a lot pantetheine.

The team attributed their success compared to other failed studies to the use of nitrogen-based compounds called nitriles. These compounds provided the energy needed to drive the reactions. Without nitriles, it’s like having a lawnmower, but without the gas to start it.

“I think it’s very surprising that no one has tried. “If you mix them all together, they’re all reactive to each other,” he said. Jasper FairchildPhD candidate in University College London who conducted the experiment. “You’d think there would be an accident, but no. You only get pantetheine. And that’s very beautiful to me,” he added.

IN primitive earthThe reaction could have taken place in small pools or lakes of water, the authors said. However, large oceans would likely dilute the concentration of the chemicals.

“This is another beautiful example of how the molecules of life, even the most complex ones like coenzymes, are susceptible to formation,” explained the chemist. Joseph Moranwho did not participate in the study.

A simple recipe for a complex-looking molecule could reimagine how life began on Earth. Historically, Powner said, scientists have suggested this biological molecules appeared in a distributed way – as a primitive world ARN which later gave rise to proteins and other chemicals.

But the new discovery shows that many of the building blocks of life may have been created simultaneously from the same basic chemicals and conditions, producing proteins, ARN and other components simultaneously.

In fact, the team’s previous studies used similar conditions and reactions to make nucleotides (which help make nucleotides ADN) and peptides (which help make proteins). These building blocks could come together, react with each other and eventually lead to the emergence of life.

A better understanding of how these components formed and joined could one day help scientists create life from static materials in the lab or even on another planet.

“We’re a long way from being able to (from scratch) create a cell,” Powner said. “This may not happen in my lifetime, but we are on the way to understanding how these molecules work together,” he concluded.

The Washington Post