Abiogenesis

• Scientists believe life arose in a primordial soup of organic chemicals and biomolecules on the early Earth, eventually leading to actual organisms.
• However, these complex molecules are assembled from a variety of small and simple molecules such as amino acids – the so-called building blocks of life.
• This latest study sheds light on how some of these building blocks might have formed and assembled, and how they ended up on Earth.

Steps to life

• Peptides can be made up of as little as two amino acids, but also range to hundreds of amino acids.
• The assemblage of amino acids into peptides is an important step because peptides provide functions such as “catalysing”, or enhancing, reactions that are important to maintaining life.
• However, despite their potentially important role in the origin of life, it was not so straightforward for peptides to form spontaneously under the environmental conditions on the early Earth.

• Many of the building blocks of life such as amino acids, lipids and sugars can form in the space environment.
• Because peptide formation is more efficient in space than on Earth, and because they can accumulate in comets, their impacts on the early Earth might have delivered loads that boosted the steps towards the origin of life on Earth.
• So what does all this mean for our chances of finding alien life?
• Once we know that, we’ll have a good idea of how widespread, or not, life might be.

Christian Schroeder does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.