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Current Origin of Life News Events, Discoveries and Articles

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Organics probably formed easily in early solar system
Complex organic compounds, including many important to life on Earth, were readily produced under conditions that likely prevailed in the primordial solar system. (2012-04-02)

Meteorites Reveal Another Way to Make Life's Components
Creating some of life's building blocks in space may be a bit like making a sandwich - you can make them cold or hot, according to new NASA research. (2012-03-12)

The quest for sugars involved in origin of life
Sugars give rise to enormous biochemical interest given the importance and diversity of the functions they carry out: they act as an energy storage system and serve as fuel for a number of biological systems; they form part of DNA and of ribonucleic acid (RNA) and, moreover, play a key role in cell processes. (2012-02-17)

Avalanche of reactions at the origin of life
Volcanic-hydrothermal flow channels offer a chemically unique environment, which at first glance appears hostile to life. It is defined by cracks in the crust of the earth, through which water flows, laden with volcanic gases are contacting a diversity of minerals. (2012-01-20)

UH Manoa researchers discover novel chemical route to form organic molecules
An international team of scientists led by University of Hawai'i at Mānoa Professor Ralf I. Kaiser, Alexander M. Mebel of Florida International University, and Alexander Tielens of Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands, discovered a novel chemical route to form polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) - complex organic molecules such as naphthalene carrying fused benzene rings - in ultra-cold regions of interstellar space. (2012-01-16)

NASA Developing Comet Harpoon for Sample Return
The best way to grab a sample of a rotating comet that is racing through the inner solar system at up to 150,000 miles per hour while spewing chunks of ice, rock and dust may be to avoid the risky business of landing on it. (2011-12-14)

Pumice proposed as home to the first life forms: A new hypothesis in Astrobiology journal
The glassy, porous, and once gas-rich rock called pumice may have given rise to early life forms, according to a provocative new hypothesis on the origin of life published in Astrobiology. (2011-10-05)

Primordial soup gets spicier
Stanley Miller gained fame with his 1953 experiment showing the synthesis of organic compounds thought to be important in setting the origin of life in motion. Five years later, he produced samples from a similar experiment, shelved them and, as far as friends and colleagues know, never returned to them in his lifetime. (2011-03-22)

Transition metal catalysts could be key to origin of life, scientists report
One of the big, unsolved problems in explaining how life arose on Earth is a chicken-and-egg paradox: How could the basic biochemicals-such as amino acids and nucleotides-have arisen before the biological catalysts (proteins or ribozymes) existed to carry out their formation? (2010-09-07)

Zapping Titan-like atmosphere with UV rays creates life precursors
The first experimental evidence showing how atmospheric nitrogen can be incorporated into organic macromolecules is being reported by a University of Arizona team. (2010-06-30)