Primitive soup? Scientists discover new recipes for the formation of life

What is the recipe for life? In fact, there is no completely correct answer because our understanding of physics, chemistry and biology is still limited to what we know. Trying to answer this question, a team of researchers published a study in the scientific journal Journal of the American Chemical Society. about the combination of some components that can create life.

The study, conducted by scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the United States, suggests dozens of ingredients to create the chemical recipe that could give rise to life as we know it. But the difference is that they are working from different “recipes”. they were able to make this origin possible in cosmic regions with the most adverse conditions; In fact, this could help with new ways to detect life on other planets.

Life’s ‘cooking’ process as scientists explain depends on basic chemical components and similar complex cycles of metabolism and reproduction. Moreover, life often starts very simply and from ‘nothing’.

“The origin of life is actually a process of something coming from nothing. But this can’t happen just once. Life depends on chemistry and conditions that can create a self-reproducing reaction pattern. Such reactions were thought to be very rare. In fact, we show that this is far from rare. “You just have to look in the right place,” said Betül Kaçar, an astrobiologist and UW-Madison professor of bacteriology.

Recipes for life

Scientists compiled approximately 270 molecular combination recipesIncluding atoms and chemical elements from the periodic table. These combinations can cause chemical reactions that form molecules and continue the same process over and over again; This type of reaction is called autocatalysis.

The research focused on a phenomenon known as the proportionality reaction, where two compounds with the same element but different numbers of electrons and relative states mix; this results in an attempt to create a new molecule between the two initial elements. Theoretically, the chain reaction could continue until the first evidence of life occurs.

The scientists’ goal was not to create a new recipe for life, exactly, but to provide new information to astronomers investigating the formation of life on distant planets.

“We will never know exactly what happened for life to form on this planet. We don’t have a time machine. But we can create multiple planetary conditions to understand how life-sustaining dynamics might evolve in a test tube. Carl Sagan said that if you want to make a cake from scratch, you must first create the universe. “I think if we want to understand the universe, we should first make some pies,” explains Kaçar.

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