Growth of Complexity

1. Growth of Complexity 29 August 2016

2. Chirality: Mirror image is different

11. Miller-Urey Experiment

12. Complexity • Simple organic matter was readily available in space and on Earth; Miller-Urey experiments show it easily forms simple organic building blocks • Life emerged spontaneously from SPONCH: If we could conceive of some warm little pond (Darwin) • Now, scientists trying to reconstruct first life, but it is not so easy • Perhaps RNA first, then DNA… but RNA is not easily made, perhaps from primordial soup • Drying ponds could concentrate nucleotides: reaction rate increases with concentration. Freezing, too. • Marginal lagoons and tidal pools are possible locations • Polymerization creates longer structures, and maintins chemically active ends

14. From Chemistry to Biology • Minerals can be hosts, support organic structures, select the template for organization, catalyze reactions on their surfaces • DNA stores genetic info; RNA transcribes to enzymes; they catalyze reactions • We can’t replicate proteins without RNA; it is simpler, perhaps it came first (RNA world). • What came first, Hardware or Software? • Tom Cech (CU Nobel Prize) showed RNA can do both