(Inside Science) — Experts believe the building blocks of life first bumped into each other about 3.5 billion years ago. This serendipitous collision somehow helped form the first rudimentary cell — and the first life on Earth.
At least, that’s been the predominant theory. Now, a team of scientists from the University of Washington is challenging this idea in a paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They propose that membranes might have been the key component that helped congregate the pieces needed to create the first cell.
“If you want to explain life, you have to explain the origin of cells,” said Roy Black, co-author of the paper and biochemist at the University of Washington in Seattle. “What this [research] does is help us to explain how cells arose, not just the separate components.”
It takes three main parts to build a primitive cell: RNA to store information, proteins to perform the daily tasks of life, and a cell membrane to keep everything in the same place.
But there’s a problem. Creating RNA produces charged molecules of magnesium, which can cause membranes to collapse. Scientists hadn’t been able to re-create an environment that could have arisen from the materials present on early Earth and allowed RNA and membranes to coexist. It’s been a huge problem for scientists trying to understand how life began on our planet.
