Life on Earth starts from a puddle?

Although often considered only an obstacle for people to bypass or jump over a wet rainy day, puddles can play a much more important role in our lives. The first factor that triggered life on early Earth could appear in a puddle, according to a new study.

Life begins from a puddle on Earth?

Researchers found that the dryness of a pool of water in the sun and its re-wetness in the rain may have enabled the key biochemical process, essential for life to form.

Nighttime and re-wet drying cycles of puddles can trigger essential biochemical reactions for life to begin forming on the early Earth.(Photo: Corbis)

A chemical reaction , allowing polypeptides to form into chains (when long enough to form proteins), occurred only after 20 cycles of day-time evaporation and dampening at night.

The authors of the study say their findings support the hypothesis that life may start on dry land and perhaps in the desert , about 4 billion years ago.

Professor Nicholas Hud, a chemist at the Georgia Institute of Technology (USA), who led the study, emphasized: "The simplicity of using wet-dewatering cycles to promote chemical properties It is necessary for life to be truly remarkable, it seems, dry soil has provided an extremely favorable environment for obtaining the chemical properties necessary for the life of onset ".

The study report, published in the journal Angewandte Chemie, said that mixing two basic biochemical building blocks - amino acids and hydroxy acids - in water is constantly drying and regenerating, which can cause them to form complex molecules. well suited. The team found that the wetting and drying cycles lead to the breakdown and recombination of organic molecules into random chains.

Amino acids are the basic building blocks of all proteins, while hydroxy acids are naturally acidic chemical compounds.Astronomers have found evidence that these compounds may exist on meteorites.

Through experimentation, Professor Hud and colleagues discovered that the hydroxy acids incorporate in the moisturizing cycles - repeated drying to form a polyester. This then facilitates the formation of connections between amino acids to produce peptides of up to 14 amino acids.

Previous research has shown that polypeptides can be produced by heating them through the boiling threshold of water, but new research implies that these reactions may also occur at much lower temperatures ( 65oC) as was detected on the ground. This process may have led to the formation of new enzyme- like molecules, which act as catalysts for other chemical reactions necessary for life.