The ascent of molecules

Where do we come from? How did we get here? These questions have preoccupied humanity since our earliest civilisations. But answering these questions is no longer just the preserve of priests and philosophers; chemists are also addressing the problem. And in doing so they might also completely redefine the concept of life.

Back in the 1880s, Charles Darwin discussed how a ‘warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity, &c.’ could give birth to compounds that could evolve into life. Since then, many chemists have tried to make their own versions of that warm little pond. The most famous is the experiment carried out by Stanley Miller during his doctoral studies with Harold Urey at the University of Chicago in the US in 1953. The experiment simulated conditions believed to have predominated on the primeval Earth, including an ocean, a reducing atmosphere and a spark discharge meant to simulate lightning. The experiment created a mixture of organic molecules and amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, but Miller never succeeded in showing how that initial soup became life.

Today, labs around the world are still working on the problem of life’s origins and it will not be a short search. More than once, those who spoke to Chemistry World compared work on the problem as comparable to particle physics’ search for the Higgs particle. ‘We know more about the origin of the universe and the origin of mass than we do the origin of life,’ stresses Lee Cronin of the University of Glasgow in the UK.

This article links to the article in Chemistry World