A review on the spontaneous formation of the building blocks of life and the generation of a set of hypotheses governing universal abiogenesis

Abstract

There have been a number of hypotheses regarding abiogenesis, the ‘Metabolism First’ model and the ‘RNA World Hypothesis’ are two such examples. All theories on abiogenesis make a set of unstated assumptions with regard to the elemental make up of life or only apply the theory to a primitive earth model. This paper reviews current knowledge from the myriad of observations from a variety of scientific disciplines and applies generally understood thermodynamic reasoning to explain the formation of molecules known to be used by life. These arguments are used in this paper to construct a set of new hypotheses which govern universal abiogenesis. The intention of this paper is to show by the application of our known laws of science that life is the end sequence of events of the fundamental forces which affect the entire universe. From these events a new hypotheses on abiogenesis can be formulated. The hypotheses proposed by this paper are incorporated in many of the current theories of abiogenesis, either assumed or accepted but very rarely stated or explained. The proposed set of five hypotheses are: (1) any celestial mass that has a body of liquid water and therefore has access to energy will form at least the building blocks of life, if not life itself. (2) The major component of any life form anywhere in the universe will be H2O. (3) Any organism, anywhere in the universe, will be carbon-based. (4) All life in the universe will be composed of nucleic acid based molecules as its code for life. (5) The cell is the universal unit of life. Throughout this paper the background to the formulation of these hypotheses is discussed, as is the explanation of why these hypotheses are universal and not limited to an application of a primitive earth model. This set of hypotheses is also testable as any investigation of a celestial body which contains liquid water (e.g. Europa) will quickly provide evidence to prove or refute the proposed theory.

Formation and evolution of C–C, C–O, CO and C–N bonds in chemical reactions of prebiotic interest

“…6, which follows the specic orbitals involved in the intermolecular interactions resulting in the breaking/ formation of bonds during the course of reaction 3. As a reference to compare the strength of intermolecular interactions, we recall the values for the archetypal H-O/H-O hydrogen bond in the water dimer: 80,81 E (2) da ¼ −7.09 kcal mol −1 , r(r c ) ¼ 2.3 Â 10 −2 a.u., jnðr c Þj=Gðr c Þ ¼ 0:89, where r c stands for the bond critical point. The general features for the formation of formic acid (FA) and ammonia (A) from formamide (F1) and two water molecules (W1, W2) are summarized in Scheme 2.…”

“…As discussed before, every single reaction begins by forming a stabilized long range complex, x R in Scheme 2. x R is the starting point of the one step concerted reaction. In the case of reaction 3, this complex involves two specic intermolecular hydrogen bonds of strengths comparable to the isolated water dimer: H-N/H-O E (2) da ¼ −4.75 kcal mol −1 , r(r c ) ¼ 1.7 Â 10 −2 a. u, jnðr c Þj=Gðr c Þ ¼ 0:88 in F1/W1, and H-O/H-O E (2) da ¼ −6.51 kcal mol −1 , r(r c ) ¼ 2.4 Â 10 −2 a. u, jnðr c Þj=Gðr c Þ ¼ 0:90 in W1/ W2. The formation of these complexes leads to somewhat shallow, purely electronic energy wells which may be overcome simply by correcting for the ZPE energies or by accounting for temperature, entropy, and internal degrees of freedom (i.e., using Gibbs energies) as concluded above during the discussion of the energetics of the reaction proles.…”

“…Abiogenesis, or the origins of life starting from non living matter, is a rich, interdisciplinary field of research encompassing work from areas as diverse as chemistry, physics, biology, astronomy, geology, among others; 1–3 its ultimate goal is to determine the conditions and mechanisms that allow life to emerge. Prebiotic chemistry, specifically, seeks to determine what type of chemical compounds and chemical reactions are necessary to produce the constituent components of life, such as biomolecules, and also studies the set of networks of chemical reactions capable of sustaining life as we know it, whether these processes took place on the early Earth, or elsewhere in the interstellar medium.…”

Transcending eons; evolutionary and mechanistic insight into plant Class I Diterpene synthases

“…Many theories abound on the exact mechanisms of abiogenesis; polymerization of biomolecules along charged clay surface templates, fatty acid micelles forming protomembranes, homochiral proteins, enzymatic RNA, and many more (Palmer, 2013;Scribano et al, 2019;Toxvaerd, 2018). Perhaps all or none of these processes played pivotal roles but it is clear from fossilized microbial mats from 3.42 billion years ago (Cavalazzi et al, 2021), and by some estimates as long as 4.29 billion years ago, (Dodd et al, 2017) that life had emerged and begun to diverge.…”