MINERAL THEORIES OF THE ORIGIN OF LIFE AND AN IRON SULFIDE EXAMPLE
MINERAL THEORIES OF THE ORIGIN OF LIFE AND AN IRON SULFIDE EXAMPLE
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DOI：
10.1007/bf01808023
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发表时间：
1992-01-01
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
RUSSELL, MJ
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
CAIRNSSMITH, AG;HALL, AJ;RUSSELL, MJ
If we really believe that a process of Darwinian evolution started on the Earth without the help of miracles, spacemen or whatever, then the first organisms (by which we mean the first systems able to evolve indefinitely through natural selection) must have been made of materials that were, broadly speaking, geochemicals. The usual view has been to suppose that the critical geochemical materials were a special class of organic compounds generated by atmospheric, oceanic and other geochemical processes that were special to the early Earth. The classical picture is of life arising from an oceanic primordial soup, a vast stockpile of the right sorts of organic molecules that had been built up as a result of various energy inputs to a reducing atmosphere. Almost without discussion" the right sorts of organic molecules" for the most primitive organisms were taken to be the same as those molecules which are universal to life now. Experiments have confirmed that amino acids at least can be produced from mixtures of reducing gases subjected to artificial lightning (Miller's famous sparking experiment, 1953). Helped by the simplicity and dramatic qualities of Miller's beautiful experiment the" primordial soup" doctrine became established to the point at which most scientists seem to believe it. But there have always been doubts, particularly more recently (Hull, 1960; Hulett, 1969; Cairns-Smith, 1982; Shapiro, 1986). For one thing the idea that there was ever a strongly reducing atmosphere has little to support it, beyond a belief that such an atmosphere would have been essential for life to have started (Chang et ai., 1983). Even if there had been such an atmosphere it would probably not have lasted long since it would have been photochemically unstable (Wayne, 1991). Although
