A Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher believes that substances that look and act like Flubber may hold the key to how life began. Gels are oddly lifelike substances somewhere between a solid and a liquid. About 20 years ago, MIT physicist Toyoichi Tanaka found that both synthetic and natural gels change phases in response to changes in their environment, much like water turning to vapor and back again. Tanaka, the Otto and Jane Morningstar Professor of Science, is now looking to gels to provide a clue to the baffling puzzle of how life on Earth began.
Life boils down to amino acids.
They line up in chains called polymers. A gel is a polymer, a long chain of identical monomers, or molecules, that are cross-linked like a web of fibers. It is those links, which capture water between them, that give gels their elasticity and fluidity. Scientists can determine the sequence of amino acids that make up specific proteins, but they don't know how to make one from scratch. Tanaka says that his laboratory may be close to synthesizing a gel with characteristics similar to those of proteins capable of recognizing a target molecule.