[Scientists have simulated the formation of fatty acids, a key
component in the assembly of Earths first cells, offering insight to
the earliest moments of life on the planet and also how life might
start on other planets.]
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SCIENTISTS DISCOVER ‘KEY STEPPING STONE’ TO THE ORIGIN OF LIFE  
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Pandora Dewan
January 15, 2024
Newsweek
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_ Scientists have simulated the formation of fatty acids, a key
component in the assembly of Earth's first cells, offering insight to
the earliest moments of life on the planet and also how life might
start on other planets. _

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Scientists have simulated the formation of fatty acids, a key
component in the assembly of Earth's first cells. The discovery not
only offers key insights to the earliest moments of life on the
planet, but it also shines a light on how life might start on other
moons and planets.

The first forms of life on Earth emerged over 3.5 billion years ago
from inert geological materials. The exact location of this emergence
is still unclear, but many scientists believe that the earliest life
forms appeared around deep-sea hydrothermal vents.

Hydrothermal vents are like rocky chimneys on the ocean floor which
spew out plumes of superheated fluid from magma beneath the Earth's
crust. "Hydrothermal vent sites, and in particular alkaline
hydrothermal vents, are unique in bringing together several key
threads in origins of life theories together," Jon Telling, a reader
in biogeochemistry at Newcastle University in the U.K,
told _Newsweek_.

"First, they provide a continual and free source of energy to drive
the synthesis of relevant organic molecules through the presence of
strong chemical gradients. Second, they contain abundant metals such
as iron and nickel, that are also abundant in evolutionary ancient
proteins that are present in microorganisms today.

"Finally, attempted reconstructions of the 'Last Universal Common
Ancestor' of all life on Earth suggest that it was a thermophile or
hyperthermophile ('liked it hot'), used hydrogen gas for energy
('food'), and could harness proton gradients to drive biochemical
reactions; all consistent with the mixing of alkaline hydrothermal
fluid with more acidic ocean or surface water."

But for life to form at these vents, several key ingredients had to
come together. "Broadly, scientists have focused on molecules that
either store and transfer biological information (e.g. nucleic acids,
DNA or RNA); catalyse reactions within cells (e.g. amino acids, [the
building blocks of proteins]); [or] make cell membranes (giving a cell
its own chemical identify separate from the external environment) e.g.
fatty acids."

This last category, the fatty acids, is the focus of Telling's latest
paper, lead by postdoctoral research associate at Durham University,
Graham Purvis.

Fatty acids are long organic molecules with regions that both attract
and repel water. Therefore, when they are placed in a watery
environment they automatically come together in cell-like
compartments, with the water-attracting parts on the outside and
water-repelling parts on the inside. It is these molecules that would
have formed the first cell membranes, isolating and protecting the
inner workings of the cell from the world around it.

"Our research has shown that fatty acids alongside a range of other
different organic molecules can be formed on iron-mineral surfaces,
from a stream of pressurised hydrogen gas and dissolved carbon dioxide
within a hydrothermal vent fluid," Telling said.

But, had these molecules remained stuck on the surface of the
iron-minerals, life on Earth might have never formed. "However,
hydrothermal fluids can be dynamic environments, with changing flow
paths and proportions of mixing between surface or seawater and the
hotter hydrothermal fluid," Telling said.

"Crucially, we think that when changes in fluid mixing cause the fluid
to become less acidic, some organic molecules such as fatty acids
should become electrically negatively charged, as will the mineral
surface, effectively repulsing each other. These organic molecules
should then lift off the mineral surface into the water in what has
been described as an 'electrostatic explosion,' and then (as fatty
acids have both a 'water loving' end and 'water hating' end )
spontaneously form fatty acid-based membrane-bound spheres, the
precursors of 'protocells' (the precursors to biological cells)."

In their study, published in the journal _Communications Earth and
Environment [[link removed]]_,
the team were able to demonstrate just how easily these long-chain
fatty acids can form under the replicated conditions of a hydrothermal
vent.

"[This study] opens the door to the next phase of experiments: proving
that they can 'lift off' and spontaneously form membrane-bound
spheres'; a key stepping stone to protocells," Telling said.

What's more, similar conditions have been proposed to exist on other
planets and moons in our solar system: "At the bottom of ice-covered
oceans, such as within Jupiter's moon Europa, or Saturn's moon
Enceladus, or in the past at active hydrothermal vent sites on Mars,
for example," Telling said.

"This research may also help inform the search for similar chemistry,
and the origin of life, elsewhere in our solar system."

_Pandora Dewan is a Newsweek Science Reporter based in London, UK. Her
focus is reporting on science, health and technology. Pandora joined
Newsweek in 2022 and previously worked as the Head of Content for the
climate change education start-up, ClimateScience and as a Freelance
writer for content creators such as Dr Karan Rajan and Thoughty2. She
is a graduate in Biological Sciences from the University of Oxford.
Languages: English._

_You can get in touch with Pandora by emailing [email protected].
or on Twitter @dewanpandora._

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* Science
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* origin of life
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* Evolution
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