The Origin And Early Evolution Of Life Prebiotic Chemistry Of Biomolecules

Studying the origin of life is one of man’s greatest achievements over the last sixty years. The fields of interest encompassed by this quest are multiple and interdisciplinary: chemistry, physics, biology, biochemistry, mathematics, geology but also statistics, atmospheric science, meteorology, oceanography, and astrophysics. Recent scientific discoveries, such as water on Mars and the existence of super-Earths with atmospheres similar to primordial Earth, have pushed researchers to simulate prebiotic conditions in explaining the abiotic formation of molecules essential to life. This collection of articles offers an overview of recent discoveries in the field of prebiotic chemistry of biomolecules, their formation and selection, and the evolution of complex chemical systems.

Studying the origin of life is one of man's greatest achievements over the last sixty years. The fields of interest encompassed by this quest are multiple and interdisciplinary: chemistry, physics, biology, biochemistry, mathematics, geology but also statistics, atmospheric science, meteorology, oceanography, and astrophysics. Recent scientific discoveries, such as water on Mars and the existence of super-Earths with atmospheres similar to primordial Earth, have pushed researchers to simulate prebiotic conditions in explaining the abiotic formation of molecules essential to life. This collection of articles offers an overview of recent discoveries in the field of prebiotic chemistry of biomolecules, their formation and selection, and the evolution of complex chemical systems.

What is life? How, where, and when did life arise? These questions have remained most fascinating over the last hundred years. Systems chemistry is the way to go to better understand this problem and to try and answer the unsolved question regarding the origin of Life. Self-organization, thanks to the role of lipid boundaries, made possible the rise of protocells. The role of these boundaries is to separate and co-locate micro-environments, and make them spatially distinct; to protect and keep them at defined concentrations; and to enable a multitude of often competing and interfering biochemical reactions to occur simultaneously. The aim of this Special Issue is to summarize the latest discoveries in the field of the prebiotic chemistry of biomolecules, self-organization, protocells and the origin of life. In recent years, thousands of excellent reviews and articles have appeared in the literature and some breakthroughs have already been achieved. However, a great deal of work remains to be carried out. Beyond the borders of the traditional domains of scientific activity, the multidisciplinary character of the present Special Issue leaves space for anyone to creatively contribute to any aspect of these and related relevant topics. We hope that the presented works will be stimulating for a new generation of scientists that are taking their first steps in this fascinating field.

The origin of life from inanimate matter has been the focus of much research for decades, both experimentally and philosophically. Luisi takes the reader through the consecutive stages from prebiotic chemistry to synthetic biology, uniquely combining both approaches. This book presents a systematic course discussing the successive stages of self-organisation, emergence, self-replication, autopoiesis, synthetic compartments and construction of cellular models, in order to demonstrate the spontaneous increase in complexity from inanimate matter to the first cellular life forms. A chapter is dedicated to each of these steps, using a number of synthetic and biological examples. With end-of-chapter review questions to aid reader comprehension, this book will appeal to graduate students and academics researching the origin of life and related areas such as evolutionary biology, biochemistry, molecular biology, biophysics and natural sciences.

This book provides a broad but in-depth analysis of the latest discoveries in prebiotic chemistry from the microscopic to the macroscopic scale.

How did life begin on the early Earth? We know that life today is driven by the universal laws of chemistry and physics. By applying these laws over the past ?fty years, en- mous progress has been made in understanding the molecular mechanisms that are the foundations of the living state. For instance, just a decade ago, the ?rst human genome was published, all three billion base pairs. Using X-ray diffraction data from crystals, we can see how an enzyme molecule or a photosynthetic reaction center steps through its catalytic function. We can even visualize a ribosome, central to all life, translate - netic information into a protein. And we are just beginning to understand how molecular interactions regulate thousands of simultaneous reactions that continuously occur even in the simplest forms of life. New words have appeared that give a sense of this wealth of knowledge: The genome, the proteome, the metabolome, the interactome. But we can’t be too smug. We must avoid the mistake of the physicist who, as the twentieth century began, stated con?dently that we knew all there was to know about physics, that science just needed to clean up a few dusty corners. Then came relativity, quantum theory, the Big Bang, and now dark matter, dark energy and string theory. Similarly in the life sciences, the more we learn, the better we understand how little we really know. There remains a vast landscape to explore, with great questions remaining.

The origin of life is one of the biggest unsolved scientific questions. This book deals with the formation and first steps of the chemical evolution of nucleic acids, including the chemical roots behind the origin of their components from the simplest sources in a geochemical context. Chemical evolution encompasses the chemical processes and interactions conducive to self-assembly and supramolecular organization, leading to an increase of complexity and the emergence of life. The book starts with a personal account of the pioneering work of Stanley Miller and Jeffrey Bada on the Chemistry of Origins of Life and how the development of organic chemistry beginning in the 19th century led to the emergence of the field of prebiotic chemistry, situated at the frontier between organic, geo- and biochemistry. It then continues reviewing in tutorial manner current central topics regarding the organization of nucleic acids: the origin of nucleobases and nucleosides, their phosphorylation and polymerization and ultimately, their self-assembly and supramolecular organization at the inception of life.