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Exciting times for Origin of Life enthusiasts.
There have been three recent publications that are relevant to origin of life issues.
They are:
A) The moon forming impact may have gotten plate tectonics started early.
Relevance to the OoL: Some consider recycling of mantle rocks to the surface important because to continues to introduce unweathered rock to the surface (under the oceans) which can be a source for primitive cellular metabolism (eating hydrogen from serpentinization).
B) Plate tectonics may have started earlier than many had thought.
Many thought plate tectonics didn't start until a few hundred thousand years after liquid water formed on the surface. A PNAS AI study of zircons disputes this.
Sediment subduction in Hadean revealed by machine learning.
Open access from PNAS here.
Plate tectonics occurring early also means that there could have been some dry land on early earth. This is another potential environment where early life might have arisen (in terrestrial ponds). Some think this is important because it provides a fresh water site where more phosphorous might have been available.
Otherwise the only dry land might have only been on a few emergent volcanoes, limiting the number of possible freshwater sites.
C) The Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) may have arisen 4.09 to 4.33 billion years ago. Some estimates have put it at 3.4 to 3.8 BYA.
This study claims that LUCA had a hydrogen eating metabolism (acetogen which makes acetate), a 2.5 megabase genome 2,600 protein encoding genes, and an immune system somewhat like Crispr to fight off viruses (intracellular parasites).
This supports the life got started fast school of thought.
All the proteins involved would have required a protein translation system as well as a protein signal recognition system to target the different topological regions of the cell (inside, outside, in the membrane, as well as the inner and outer membrane surfaces).
These are all complex and sophisticated molecular systems.
I have only glanced at this one so far so I may have more to add later.
I highly commend these authors for making these articles open access!
There have been three recent publications that are relevant to origin of life issues.
They are:
A) The moon forming impact may have gotten plate tectonics started early.
A Giant Impact Origin for the First Subduction on Earth
Open access from Geophysical Research Papers here.Relevance to the OoL: Some consider recycling of mantle rocks to the surface important because to continues to introduce unweathered rock to the surface (under the oceans) which can be a source for primitive cellular metabolism (eating hydrogen from serpentinization).
B) Plate tectonics may have started earlier than many had thought.
Many thought plate tectonics didn't start until a few hundred thousand years after liquid water formed on the surface. A PNAS AI study of zircons disputes this.
Sediment subduction in Hadean revealed by machine learning.
Open access from PNAS here.
Plate tectonics occurring early also means that there could have been some dry land on early earth. This is another potential environment where early life might have arisen (in terrestrial ponds). Some think this is important because it provides a fresh water site where more phosphorous might have been available.
Otherwise the only dry land might have only been on a few emergent volcanoes, limiting the number of possible freshwater sites.
C) The Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) may have arisen 4.09 to 4.33 billion years ago. Some estimates have put it at 3.4 to 3.8 BYA.
The nature of the last universal common ancestor and its impact on the early Earth system
This open access Nature Ecology and Evolution paper is found here.This study claims that LUCA had a hydrogen eating metabolism (acetogen which makes acetate), a 2.5 megabase genome 2,600 protein encoding genes, and an immune system somewhat like Crispr to fight off viruses (intracellular parasites).
This supports the life got started fast school of thought.
All the proteins involved would have required a protein translation system as well as a protein signal recognition system to target the different topological regions of the cell (inside, outside, in the membrane, as well as the inner and outer membrane surfaces).
These are all complex and sophisticated molecular systems.
I have only glanced at this one so far so I may have more to add later.
I highly commend these authors for making these articles open access!
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