Primordial soup revisited
The famous Miller-Urey experiment in 1953 which recreated hypothetical conditions thought at the time to be present on the early Earth, and tested for the occurrence of chemical evolution.Stanley Miller, then a 23-year-old graduate student with Harold Urey, conducted an experiment which happens to be a classical experiment towards understanding origin of life on our planet.The main reason behind performing this experiment was to test Alexander Oparin and J. B. S. Haldane’s hypothesis that conditions on the primitive Earth favoured chemical reactions that probably synthesized organic compounds from inorganic precursors.
In the experiment Stanley Miller used water (H2O), methane (CH4), ammonia (NH3), hydrogen (H2), and carbon monoxide (CO) in a sterile flask and sparked using a pair of electrodes. Later the flask was allowed to be cooled and analysis of the mixture in the flask showed that that amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, could be produced from a mixture of basic precursors, famously now known as “primordial soup”.
Stanley Miller died in 2007, and in going through his cupboards , the original apparatus was discovered and also several small sealed vials containing the unanalysed samples from the famous experiment of 1953 were also found.A research team led by Miller’s former graduate student Jeffrey Bada analysed leftovers of famous experiment again using modern sophisticated equipments, revealing new clues to the origin of life on Earth.One thing which needs to appreciated that Stanley like other great scientists kept a perfect notes of all his work ,which had helped Jeffrey to retrace the unanalysed samples without any problem.This is one important aspect of doing science or for that matter in any other field is to keep an account of your work properly ,so that people after you can still make sense of the work(unpublished) and can make use of your reagents even when you are not around.
Its a strange coincidence that Stanley Miller published his result as a short communication Journal Science in 1953 and now 55 years later Bada, a geochemist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla published his new results from same old primordial soup also in Science.
Reanalysis of primordial soup resulted in twenty two amino acids and five amines in the vials when compared to Miler’s reported only five amino acids ,which is largely due to the technology we have today in analysis of samples.There is lot of debate in this field and Miller’s reducing atmosphere is no longer considered to be an accurate representation of the ancient earth’s atmosphere.But still the experiment validates an important aspect that for synthesis of organic compounds (which in turn form building blocks of life) needs no assistance from external source,instead can be formed naturally from chemical reactions.
References:
Johnson AP, Cleaves HJ, Dworkin JP, Glavin DP, Lazcano A, Bada JL (October 2008). “The Miller volcanic spark discharge experiment”.
Science 322 (5900): 404. doi:10.1126
Miller, Stanley L.; Harold C. Urey (July 1959). “Organic Compound Synthesis on the Primitive Earth”. Science 130: 245. doi:10.1126
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