No Eden here.
Life probably didn't get its start in volcanic puddles like this one in Kamchatka, Russia.

Credit: David Deamer

Hot Soup Not So Tasty for Early Life

By Michael Schirber
ScienceNOW Daily News
15 February 2006

Astrobiologists--and others who study life's origins--believe the first native Earthlings may have formed in baths of boiling water. This notion is in part based on recent discoveries of rugged microbes that thrive in hot springs and around hydrothermal vents on the sea floor (ScienceNOW, 20 June 2005:). Genetic analysis indicates that these "thermophiles" sit at the base of the tree of life, implying that they are closely related to the common ancestor of all living organisms.

Scientists have shown that peptides and other complex biological molecules can assemble in volcaniclike environments recreated in the lab, but biophysicist David Deamer of the University of California, Santa Cruz, wondered if this could happen in an actual volcanic pool. After finding such a puddle in Kamchatka on the eastern coast of Russia, where recent volcanic activity had erased any signs of life, Deamer and colleagues added a can of "primordial soup" containing the building blocks of proteins and DNA, as well as fatty acids that could form rudimentary cell membranes (ScienceNOW, 15 April 2002).

When the scientists sampled the water after a few hours, they were surprised to find that most of the added material had disappeared. Tests revealed that the missing ingredients were bound to the clay that lined the tiny pond. The molecules "are nailed down, so they can't interact," Deamer says. As a result, hot volcanic pools may be unlikely spots for the first assembly of life's little bits, says Deamer, who presented his findings yesterday at the Royal Society in London. Deamer's team will publish a paper on the findings in an upcoming issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.

Deamer plans to repeat the study on Hawaiian volcanoes where clay may be less of a problem. However, chemist James Ferris of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute IN Troy, New York, who has found certain clays can actually facilitate biological interactions in the lab, thinks a better environment might be a cooler, less acidic pond. The trouble is that these places are usually already "contaminated" with life, he notes. Perhaps someday, says biologist Anthony Walsby of Bristol University, U.K., we'll be able to try this experiment on a truly sterile place, such as Mars.

Related Sites