Re: OT: Life from a drop of rain, New research suggests rainwater helped form the first protocell walls

On Fri, 23 Aug 2024 10:59:17 +0100, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 22/08/2024 23:40, john larkin wrote:

On Thu, 22 Aug 2024 04:33:34 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
wrote:
 

Life from a drop of rain: New research suggests rainwater helped form the first protocell walls
A Nobel-winning biologist, two engineering schools, and a vial of Houston rainwater
cast new light on the origin of life on Earth
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/08/240821150020.htm
Date:
August 21, 2024
Source:
University of Chicago
Summary:
New research shows that rainwater could have helped create a meshy wall around protocells 3.8 billion years ago, a critical step in the transition from tiny beads of RNA to every bacterium, plant, animal, and human that ever lived.
>
There you go, simplicity!

 
It's easy to form a blob with some goo inside. Like mayonaise.

>
One conjecture is that it takes a planet with a decent sized moon so
that tide range is variable to have rock pools that concentrate the
chemistry to a point where it works. We will know better once Mars or
Europa has been properly explored. Finding life independently evolved
somewhere else would go a long way to answering these questions.

 
The hard part is the DNA and all its tousands of supporting
structures.

>
That is why self replicating autocatalytic peptides and RNA probably
came first. They are much less stable and mutate faster. But RNA is good
enough that plenty of viruses and viroids (plant pathogens) still use it
today. They are the last remnants of earlier pre-DNA life on Earth.
>

Or they are parasites that evolved after DNA life.

DNA with its double helix preserves information much more reliably in
complex organisms, but that came much later when cells started to have a
nucleus and organelles inside. Primitive life had neither just a single
chromosome (and bacteria today are descendents of those archaea).

Proponents of RNA World should design an RNA based reproducing,
evolving life form.