Related papers: Possible Ribose Synthesis in Carbonaceous Planetes…
Prebiotic molecules, fundamental building blocks for the origin of life, have been found in carbonaceous chondrites. The exogenous delivery of these organic molecules onto the Hadean Earth could have sparked the polymerization of the first…
Carbonaceous chondrites are a class of meteorite known for having a high content of water and organics. In this study, abundances of the nucleobases, i.e., the building blocks of RNA and DNA, found in carbonaceous chondrites are collated…
The origin of life on Earth involves the early appearance of an information-containing molecule such as RNA. The basic building blocks of RNA could have been delivered by carbon-rich meteorites, or produced in situ by processes beginning…
The possible meteorite parent body origin of Earth's pregenetic nucleobases is substantiated by the guanine (G), adenine (A) and uracil (U) measured in various meteorites. Cytosine (C) and thymine (T) however are absent in meteorites,…
Prior to the origin of simple cellular life, the building blocks of RNA (nucleotides) had to form and polymerize in favourable environments on the early Earth. At this time, meteorites and interplanetary dust particles delivered organics…
Understanding what environmental conditions prevailed on early Earth during the Hadean eon, and how this set the stage for the origins of life, remains a challenge. Geologic processes such as serpentinization and bombardment by chondritic…
Carbonaceous chondrites are samples from planetesimals that formed 2-4 million years after solar system formation began. They consist of distinct dust components formed at different times and locations in the accretion disk and whose…
Carbonaceous chondrite meteorites are known for having high water and organic material contents, including amino acids. Here we address the origin of amino acids in the warm interiors of their parent bodies (planetesimals) within a few…
How life started on Earth is an unsolved mystery. There are various hypotheses for the location ranging from outer space to the seafloor, subseafloor or potentially deeper. Here, we applied extensive ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD)…
Life demonstrates remarkable homochirality of its major building blocks: nucleic acids, amino acids, sugars, and phospholipids. We propose a mechanism that places the root of life homochirality in the formation of phospholipid bilayer…
It is suggested that life originated in a three-step process referred to as the jigsaw model. RNA, proteins, or similar organic molecules polymerized in a dehydrated carbon-rich environment, on surfaces in a carbon-rich environment, or in…
Protoplanetary disks are dust-rich structures around young stars. The crystalline and amorphous materials contained within these disks are variably thermally processed and accreted to make bodies of a wide range of sizes and compositions,…
Carbonaceous chondrites are some of the most primitive meteorites and derive from planetesimals that formed a few million years after the beginning of the solar system. Here, using new and previously published Cr, Ti, and Te isotopic data,…
The simplest possible beginning of abiogenesis has been a riddle from the last century, which is most successfully solved by the Lipid World hypothesis. However, origin of the next stages of evolution starting form lipids is still in dark.…
The RNA World hypothesis predicts that self-replicating RNAs evolved before DNA genomes and coded proteins. Despite widespread support for the RNA World, self-replicating RNAs have yet to be identified in a natural context, leaving a key…
Hydrogen cyanide (HCN) is crucial for the RNA World hypothesis, forming biomolecules essential for early life. Life likely emerged around 4 billion years ago during the early Archean Eon, a period on Earth with a fainter sun, frequent…
Abiotic emergence of ordered information stored in the form of RNA is an important unresolved problem concerning the origin of life. A polymer longer than 40--100 nucleotides is necessary to expect a self-replicating activity, but the…
In the laboratory, the photo-and thermochemical evolution of ices, made of simple molecules of astrophysical relevance, always leads to the formation of semi-refractory water-soluble organic residues. Targeted searches for specific…
The RNA world hypothesis suggests a pathway of how life emerged on early earth. It assumes that life started with RNA based systems, capable of storing, transmitting and replicating information, envisioning that monomers and short RNA…
The widespread presence of ribonucleic acid (RNA) catalysts and cofactors in Earth's biosphere today suggests that RNA was the first biopolymer to support Darwinian evolution. However, most "path-hypotheses" to generate building blocks for…