An amazing study that has just been published in the journal Nature Chemistry, explains a fantastic theory of how a compound now discovered is the key to combining elements that existed during the early days of earth which has led to the origins of life. Scientists find a missing link to creation itself.
Perhaps the biggest and most mysterious question that every intelligent person wonders is where are we from? How did the Universe begin? Every scientific endeavor be it the Higgs Boson or studies in space boils down to one thing, the quest to solve the mystery of the evolution of life. But!! Scientists feel they have stumbled on a startling discovery and more exciting since the Higgs Boson a few years ago. A team consisting of scientists from various countries including the US and India have discovered a compound that could hold the key to the origin of life on earth. It could well be the missing link to creation itself.
The amazing discovery was made by Chemists at the Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) in California. The research brought about a hypothesis that the key ingredient required for early life forms depended on a chemical reaction called Phosphorylation. The chemical reaction played an important role for assembling three main ingredients that when combined create life.
That was short strands of nucleotides for genetic data storage, short chains of peptides or amino acids that perform the main work of living cells and lipids that form cell walls.
The researchers say that a phosphorylating agent dating back to early earth has never been discovered till date and it was this particular new compound that produced the three classes of molecules under similar conditions. The name of the new mystery compound is diamidophosphate (DAP). Associate professor of chemistry at TSRI Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy stated that it was a phosphorylation process that was responsible for bringing together the earlier mentioned three steps of cell formation that could have formed what is known as oligonucleotides, oligopeptides and the encapsulating cell wall. It was this process that then gave rise to various chemistries that ultimately lead to the first living organism.
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Scientists the world over have struggled to locate a roadmap of the journey called the origin of life studying biological chemistry and cell based biochemistry but the answer has always proved elusive. Krishnamurthy says that it was very hard to even think about rather imagine a common meeting ground for these three life producing processes to meet and combine to form the first primitive life forms. The researchers which included Megha Karki also revealed that DAP had the ability to phosphorylate all the four nucleosides which could then have easily formed the first building blocks of RNA in liquid such as water or as a paste-like state under various temperatures and Earth conditions.
The constant activity of DAP also led to the formation of RNA chains of phosphorylated building blocks that led to life. Krishnamurthy went on to add that under idle conditions, DAO and water when combined could yield the three most important classes of pre-biological molecules that combined and underwent a transformation that soon created opportunities for further chemical interaction.
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It seems that science is well and truly on the right part to find the missing answers to link up various theories that could soon give rise to the ultimate answer of life itself. Hypothesis and theories do exist where elements such as the Higgs boson were known to have existed but yet were not discovered. That of course is a thing of the recent past and now DAP the missing link discovered which will help explain the origins of life on Earth.
The team of scientists included co first authors Clémentine Gibard, Ph.D., Subhendu Bhowmik, Ph.D., and Megha Karki, Ph.D. The trio are postdoctoral research associates at the Scripps Research Institute in California. It was this trio that discovered how DAP could phosphorylate each of the four nucleosides which are building blocks of RNA in elements like water.
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The catalyst of the process was an organic compound called Imidazole and no that’s not an antibiotic. Imidazole was probably present during Earths formative years and it helped DAP‘s activity to create RNA chains of building blocks that had been formed from DAP Phosphorylation. DAP together with Imidazole also managed to phosphorylate glycerol and fatty acids also lipids that ultimate self-created vesicles which are small phosphor like capsules or simply put, a primitive living cell.
It was observed in the research that at room temperature, DAP phosphorylated in water amino acids like glycine, aspartic acid, and glutamic acid. This helped these molecules to link up again and form into a smaller version of proteins called peptides or peptide chains.
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To make a difficult story short, the origination of life or the very formation of the basic living cell is actually a combination of various individual elements that existed in nature. It was the compound DAP along with a catalyst that helped these elements combine together through a process called phosphorylation that soon became the stepping stone to further chemical processes that eventually led to the creation of life.
But when the answers to the biological significance of life are gradually being answered and scientists find a missing link to creation, it would be nice if scientists to derive an explanation of our own abilities of consciousness, the way we think act and behave. Are all these really as Carl Sagan said the result of our physiological anatomy of our brains or are we more than that? That is true food for thought and one that would definitely take a long time to find out. On the other hand, if that was true, then if scientists figure out more preserving methods to keep alive the anatomy of one’s brain, using organic means or artificial means, then would we continue to exist consciously??? It would be nice to find out, wouldn’t it??
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