New research on the origin of life is making progress

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Scientists closer to finding origins of life
4:00AM Friday May 15, 2009
By Steve Connor

"Scientists have developed an experiment which demonstrates how the very 
first life may have formed about four billion years ago.

"John Sutherland and colleagues at Manchester University have broken new 
ground by being able to synthesise almost from scratch two of the four 
building blocks of RNA, the self-replicating molecule that many 
scientists believe to be the most likely contender for the original 
molecule of life.

"Dr Sutherland believes that he has shown how it was possible to make 
all the building blocks of RNA from the simple chemicals that would have 
existed on Earth four billion years ago.

""We've made the building blocks of RNA from what was around on the 
early Earth and is still around in interstellar space and in the 
atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan," Dr Sutherland said. "We haven't yet 
made the RNA molecule itself but we've made two of the four sub-units or 
building blocks. It suggests that making the molecule is possible," he 
said."

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http://is.gd/zSpb

That shows that it is highly likely that RNA molecules could have 
assembled spontaneously from raw materials that are known to have been 
present on the early earth. Another step needed is reproduction in an 
RNA system, which would count as life. This has been observed in a 
simple system.

A self replicating RNA enzyme system has been created in the laboratory.

"Chemists have shown that a group of synthetic enzymes replicated, 
competed and evolved much like a natural ecosystem, but without life or 
cells.

"So long as you provide the building blocks and the starter seed, it 
goes forever," said Gerald Joyce, a chemist at the Scripps Research 
Institute and co-author of the paper published Thursday in Science. "It 
is immortalized molecular information."

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http://is.gd/A2kd

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