Newsgroup: it.scienza.astronomia.seti
Titolo: Revolutionary New Theory For Origins Of Life On Earth


Sent: Thursday, December 05, 2002 9:40 AM
Subject: [SETI Italia] [Revolutionary New Theory For Origins Of Life On
Earth]
Press and Public Relations Office
The Royal Society
London, U.K.
Contact:
Soccy Ponsford
Press and PR Office
The Royal Society
Tel: 020 7451 2508
email: 
socorro....@royalsoc.ac.uk
4 December 2002
Revolutionary new theory for origins of life on earth
A totally new and highly controversial theory on the origin
of life on earth, is set to cause a storm in the science
world and has implications for the existence of life on other
planets. Research[*] by Professor William Martin of the
University of Dusseldorf and Dr Michael Russell of the
Scottish Environmental Research Centre in Glasgow, claims
that living systems originated from inorganic incubators --
small compartments in iron sulphide rocks. The new theory
radically departs from existing perceptions of how life
developed and it will be published in Philosophical
Transactions series B, a learned journal produced by the
Royal Society.
Since the 1930s the accepted theories for the origins of
cells and therefore the origin of life, claim that chemical
reactions in the earth's most ancient atmosphere produced
the building blocks of life -- in essence -- life first,
cells second and the atmosphere playing a role.
Professor Martin and Dr Russell have long had problems with
the existing hypotheses of cell evolution and their theory
turns traditional views upside down. They claim that cells
came first. The first cells were not living cells but
inorganic ones made of iron sulphide and were formed not at
the earth's surface but in total darkness at the bottom of
the oceans. Life, they say, is a chemical consequence of
convection currents through the earth's crust and in
principle, this could happen on any wet, rocky planet.
Dr Russell says: "As hydrothermal fluid -- rich in compounds
such as hydrogen, cyanide, sulphides and carbon monoxide --
emerged from the earth's crust at the ocean floor, it
reacted inside the tiny metal sulphide cavities. They
provided the right microenvironment for chemical reactions
to take place. That kept the building blocks of life
concentrated at the site where they were formed rather than
diffusing away into the ocean. The iron sulphide cells, we
argue, is where life began."
One of the implications of Martin and Russell's theory is
that life on other planets or some large moons in our own
solar system, might be much more likely than previously
assumed.
The research by Professor Martin and Dr Russell is backed
up by another paper "The redox protein construction kit:
pre-last universal common+ ancestor evolution of energy-
conserving enzymes" by F. Baymann, E. Lebrun, M. Brugna,
B. Schoepp-Cothenet, M.-T. Giudici-Orticoni & W. Nitschke
which will be published in the same edition.
[*] "On the origins of cells: a hypothesis for the
evolutionary transitions from abiotic geochemistry to
chemoautotrophic prokaryotes, and from prokaryotes to
nucleated cells", by Professor William Martin, Institut
fuer Botanik III, University of Dusseldorf and Dr Michael
Russell, Scottish Environmental Research Centre, Glasgow.
 
http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk
For further information, PDF file, and media password to
access files direct, please contact:
Elaine Calvert
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email: 
elaine....@lineone.net
To read more about this forthcoming issue,
 
http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/phil_bio/news/genomics.html
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