Life on Earth comes from ... clay?

A new study suggests that all life on Earth can be derived from clay, like what the Bible (Christian), the Koran (Islam) and ancient Greek philosophy once mentioned This is thousands of years.

According to the Scientific Reports magazine, researchers from Cornell University (USA) believe that clay can be "a cradle of life on Earth". A combination of many minerals in the soil in its most basic form, clay acts as a breeding laboratory of tiny molecules and chemicals that they "absorb like sponges".

This view is very similar to the content of a hypothesis that has been popular for thousands of years in many different cultures, although they do not use the same scientific explanation.

In the religious texts from ancient Egypt to Chinese legends or the Koran of the Jews, it is said that the god / god used clay to shape the human form, then blew the soul into that to create life. Even the first volume of the Old Testament, the "Creation of the World" part also states that humans are born of dust and will return to dust when they die.

Modern American researchers have cited scientific grounds to reinforce this view. According to them, in seawater, clay forms a hydrogel - a mass that absorbs tiny minerals, chemicals and molecules from its surroundings.

Professor Dan Luo of Cornell University explains: "In the early stages of Earth's geological history, clay hydrogel functions to confine biological molecules and biochemical reactions. After billions of years, substances Compound chemistry in which a series of complex reactions have been made to form proteins, DNA and eventually the whole mechanism of producing living cells ".

The conclusion is drawn from the team's own experiments, when they used synthetic hydrogels, added DNA, amino acids and enzymes, and stimulated protein production.

Although research can be considered as a hypothesis about the formation of life on Earth, it still has many modern and economical applications for pharmaceutical manufacturing."Why should we consider using clay? Because this is a very cheap material. Moreover, using clay helps to dramatically increase protein production , " the study authors added.