But it has copied enough of an RNA template to feel it is on the right track. Team members consider this some of the strongest evidence yet that RNA chemistry could have promoted early life. The early life puzzle also challenges scientists to explain how certain pre-life chemicals became biologically significant. Non-life chemistry produced many different organic materials some 4 billion years ago on earth. These would have included amino acids, some of which are building blocks of proteins today.
Amino acids come in two forms that are mirror images of each other.
Robert Hazen thinks minerals are the key. Dr. Hazen and Timothy Filley at the Carnegie Institution in Washington, and Glenn Goodfriend at nearby George Washington University recently described research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that makes this point. They worked with calcite, a mineral that forms limestone and seashells. Again, this doesn't prove pre-life chemistry worked that way. But it does encourage Hazen to pursue his thesis.