Before there was oxygen on Earth, there was cyanide. Here’s a look at how a poisonous gas may have been a key ingredient to the birth of life on our planet.
is that it utilizes proteins to form compounds that are necessary for life today. Only, there was oneproblem with r-TCA back in the day. Remember how oxygen wasn’t present in early Earth? Neither were the proteins necessary for the r-TCA cycle to run. This is why Krishnamurthy and his team ran their experiment using cyanide. They mimicked an alternative cycle that could have comprised life’s initial compounds.
While the detailed experiment does give us a peak into the Earth’s atmosphere 4.5 billion years ago, dozens of questions behind the origin of life still remain. Did life on Earth really start with a dose of poison? Krishnamurthy speculates that to tackle such a scientific mystery, we must forget what life is and imagine ourselves on early Earth 4.5 billion years ago. Hint: Picture comets, volcanoes spewing and no signs of human life.
The science of the origin of life is constantly evolving. As new research floods in, we add a new piece to the puzzle. The rest remains to be solved.
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