>the origin of life

>the origin of the genetic code

>the origin of sex
>the origin of multicellular life
>the origin of morality

FORMATION OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM

our solar system is thought to have formed from a giant rotating cloud of gas and
dust, known as a protoplanetary disc. the sun formed at the center of the disc, and
the planets gradually formed around the sun in a process known as accretion.

FORMATION OF THE MOON

according to the "giant impact" hypothesis, the moon formed as a result of
collision between earth and a mars-sized body called Theia. the impact caused a
portion of the combined mantle of earth and theia to be expelled into space,
eventually forming the moon.

ABIOGENESIS
Abiogenesis, or informally the origin of life,[3][4][5][a] is the natural process
by which life has arisen from non-living matter, such as simple organic compounds.
[6][4][7][8] While the details of this process are still unknown, the prevailing
scientific hypothesis is that the transition from non-living to living entities was
not a single event, but an evolutionary process of increasing complexity that
involved molecular self-replication, self-assembly, autocatalysis, and the
emergence of cell membranes.[9][10][11] Although the occurrence of abiogenesis is
uncontroversial among scientists, its possible mechanisms are poorly understood.
There are several principles and hypotheses for how abiogenesis could have
occurred.[12]

A Simpler Origin for Life

The sudden appearance of a large self-copying molecule such as RNA was exceedingly
improbable. Energy-driven networks of small molecules afford better odds as the
initiators of life.

Extraordinary discoveries inspire extraordinary claims. Thus James Watson reported

that, immediately after they had uncovered the structure of DNA, Francis Crick
"winged into the Eagle (pub) to tell everyone within hearing that we had discovered
the secret of life." Their structure--an elegant double helix--almost merited such
enthusiasm. Its proportions permitted information storage in a language in which
four chemicals, called bases, played the same role as twenty six letters do in the
English language.

Further, the information was stored in two long chains, each of which specified the
contents of its partner. This arrangement suggested a mechanism for reproduction,
that was subsequently illustrated in many biochemistry texts, as well as on a tie
that my wife bought for me at a crafts fair: The two strands of the DNA double
helix parted company. As they did so, new DNA building blocks, called nucleotides,
lined up along the separated strands and linked up. Two double helices now existed
in place of one, each a replica of the original.

The Watson-Crick structure triggered an avalanche of discoveries about the way in

which living cells function today. These insights also stimulated speculations
about life's origins. Nobel Laureate H. J. Muller wrote that the gene material was
"living material, the present-day representative of the first life," which Carl
Sagan visualized as "a primitive free-living naked gene situated in a dilute
solution of organic matter." In this context, "organic" specifies material
containing bound carbon atoms. Organic chemistry, a subject sometimes feared by
pre-medical students, is the chemistry of carbon compounds, both those present in
life and those playing no part in life. Many different definitions of life have
been proposed. Muller's remark would be in accord with what has been called the
NASA definition of life: Life is a self-sustained chemical system capable of
undergoing Darwinian evolution.

Richard Dawkins elaborated on this image of the earliest living entity in his book
The Selfish Gene: "At some point a particularly remarkable molecule was formed by
accident. We will call it the Replicator. It may not have been the biggest or the
most complex molecule around, but it had the extraordinary property of being able
to create copies of itself." When Dawkins wrote these words 30 years ago, DNA was
the most likely candidate for this role. As we shall see, several other replicators
have now been suggested.

When RNA Ruled the World

Unfortunately, complications soon set in. DNA replication cannot proceed without
the assistance of a number of proteins--members of a family of large molecules that
are chemically very different from DNA. Proteins, like DNA, are constructed by
linking subunits, amino acids in this case, together to form a long chain. Cells
employ twenty of these building blocks in the proteins that they make, affording a
variety of products capable of performing many different tasks--proteins are the
handymen of the living cell. Their most famous subclass, the enzymes, act as
expeditors, speeding up chemical processes that would otherwise take place too
slowly to be of use to life.

The above account brings to mind the old riddle: Which came first, the chicken or
the egg? DNA holds the recipe for protein construction. Yet that information cannot
be retrieved or copied without the assistance of proteins. Which large molecule,
then, appeared first in getting life started--proteins (the chicken) or DNA (the
egg)?

A possible solution appeared when attention shifted to a new champion--RNA. This

versatile class of molecule is, like DNA, assembled of nucleotide building blocks,
but plays many roles in our cells. Certain RNAs ferry information from DNA to
structures (which themselves are largely built of other kinds of RNA) that
construct proteins. In carrying out its various duties, RNA can take on the form of
a double helix that resembles DNA, or of a folded single strand, much like a
protein. In 2006 the Nobel prizes in both chemistry and medicine were awarded for
discoveries concerning the role of RNA in editing and censoring DNA instructions.
Warren E. Leary could write in the New York Times that RNA "is swiftly emerging
from the shadows of its better-known cousin DNA."

For many scientists in the origin-of-life field, those shadows had lifted two
decades earlier with the discovery of ribozymes, enzyme-like substances made of
RNA. A simple solution to the chicken-and-egg riddle now appeared to fall into
place: Life began with the appearance of the first RNA molecule. In a germinal 1986
article, Nobel Laureate Walter Gilbert of Harvard University wrote in the journal
Nature: "One can contemplate an RNA world, containing only RNA molecules that serve
to catalyze the synthesis of themselves. & The first step of evolution proceeds
then by RNA molecules performing the catalytic activities necessary to assemble
themselves from a nucleotide soup." In this vision, the first self-replicating RNA
that emerged from non-living matter carried out the functions now executed by RNA,
DNA and proteins.

The Miller�Urey experiment[1] (or Miller experiment)[2] was a chemical experiment

that simulated the conditions thought at the time (1952) to be present on the early
Earth and tested the chemical origin of life under those conditions. The experiment
at the time supported Alexander Oparin's and J. B. S. Haldane's hypothesis that
putative conditions on the primitive Earth favoured chemical reactions that
synthesized more complex organic compounds from simpler inorganic precursors.
Considered to be the classic experiment investigating abiogenesis, it was conducted
in 1952[3] by Stanley Miller, with assistance from Harold Urey, at the University
of Chicago and later the University of California, San Diego and published the
following year.[4][5][6]

After Miller's death in 2007, scientists examining sealed vials preserved from the
original experiments were able to show that there were actually well over 20
different amino acids produced in Miller's original experiments. That is
considerably more than what Miller originally reported, and more than the 20 that
naturally occur in life.[7] More recent evidence suggests that Earth's original
atmosphere might have had a composition different from the gas used in the Miller
experiment, but prebiotic experiments continue to produce racemic mixtures of
simple-to-complex compounds under varying conditions.[8]

The RNA world is a hypothetical stage in the evolutionary history of life on Earth,
in which self-replicating RNA molecules proliferated before the evolution of DNA
and proteins. The term also refers to the hypothesis that posits the existence of
this stage.

The Emergence of Cells During the Origin of Life

Modern living organisms are organized into cells. Fundamentally, a cell consists of
a genome, which carries information, and a membrane, which separates the genome
from the external environment. By segregating individual genomes from one another,
cellular organization is thought to be critical to the evolution of replicating
systems (1, 2). Some of the oldest known rocks on Earth (~3.5 billion years old)
contain biochemical signatures of life and also contain tantalizing suggestions of
cellular fossils (3). But how did early self-replicating chemicals give rise to the
�cell� as a unified entity? The combination of a genome and membrane does not
constitute a unified cell unless interactions between the components result in
mutual benefit. Was it a lucky accident that genomes and membranes began to
cooperate with each other (e.g., evolution of an enzyme to synthesize membrane
lipids)? Or are there simple physicochemical mechanisms that promote interactions
between any genome and membrane, leading to the emergence of cellular behaviors? We
explored such mechanisms experimentally, using model protocells.

A protocell could be constructed by encapsulating a self-replicating genome inside

a chemically simple, self-replicating membrane (1). This minimalist, forward-
engineering approach is akin to early evolution, which must have also used a
minimal set of components. RNA is a particularly elegant genomic material, because
it can act as both information carrier and enzyme [e.g., as an RNA polymerase (4)].
The discovery that the ribosome contains a catalytic ribozyme core lends
considerable weight to the theory that an RNA world preceded the modern DNA-RNA-
protein world (5�7). For the membrane, fatty acids are simple amphiphilic molecules
that self-assemble into bilayer vesicles. These vesicles have interesting self-
reproducing properties, including the ability to undergo multiple cycles of growth
and division (8). Fatty acids have been synthesized under a variety of prebiotic
conditions and have been found on meteorites (9�11). To validate this experimental
model, we showed that the hammerhead ribozyme, which catalyzes a self-cleavage (or
ligation) reaction, is active when encapsulated in vesicles composed of fatty acid
(myristoleic acid) and its cognate glycerol monoester (12).

During the origin of life, what behavior would demonstrate the emergence of the
cell as a new level of biological organization? A defining behavior of living
systems is Darwinian evolution, which may act at any level, including that of the
gene and the cell. Using model protocells, we observed a competition between
vesicles encapsulating RNA and empty vesicles (13). Vesicles encapsulating high
concentrations of RNA experienced substantial osmotic stress, driving the uptake of
fatty acid from unstressed membranes. This resulted in the transfer of ~25% of the
membrane from empty vesicles to vesicles containing RNA, relieving the membrane
tension caused by the osmotic gradient. The growth of the osmotically stressed
vesicles and the reduction of the unstressed vesicles were measured by the
fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) between fluorescent dyes incorporated
into the membrane.

We suggest that a similar process took place during early evolution�vesicles

encapsulating highly active genomic replicators would generate osmotic pressure,
causing them to �steal� membrane from other vesicles containing less active
sequences. Genomic fitness (i.e., replicative ability) would be translated into
cellular fitness as the genome and membrane increased together, moving the
evolutionary unit from the replicating molecule to the whole cell. As soon as
replicators became encapsulated, a primitive form of competition could emerge
between cells (see the figure). Remarkably, this process does not require a chance
increase in complexity (e.g., addition of a new enzyme), but instead relies only on
the physical properties of a semipermeable membrane encapsulating solute.

What Came Before DNA?

The question took me by surprise. I was sitting in a noisy Boston caf� with two
biochemists who were having a straight-faced conversation about putting together a
budget to create synthetic life-forms. Next to me was Jack Szostak of Harvard
Medical School, and across the table was Steven Benner, who had flown up from the
University of Florida to pay Szostak a visit. The conversation was thrumming along,
touching on the efficiencies of chemical reactions and the like, when Benner
abruptly turned to me and asked, �How much do you think it would cost to create a
self-replicating organism capable of Darwinian evolution?�

The question was not �Will we ever create life?� but simply how much money creating
life would cost. �Twenty million dollars,� I said, choosing the number completely
at random.

Benner nodded. �That�s what Jack says.�

Szostak, whose large glasses and round face make him look like an affable owl, had
been letting Benner do most of the talking. Now he smiled, nodded with a slow
blink, and said, �Sounds right.�

Sounds right? As we strolled back to Szostak�s lab, past the long lines of idling
ambulettes parked by the Massachusetts General Hospital emergency room, I did some
calculations in my head. Sequencing the human genome cost roughly $500 million, and
essentially all that scientists had to show for the money was a long string of
letters that make up human DNA. By contrast, for less money than a middling movie
makes in a weekend, Szostak hopes to transform chemicals into a single-celled
organism that will grow, divide, and evolve�and soon. �I think it�s conceivable it
could be done in as little as three years,� he said. �The number of steps that
might be real potential roadblocks has declined almost to zero.�

What�s more, Szostak�s goal is not just to create life from scratch. His ultimate
objective is bigger: Find out how life began on Earth. The fossil record and modern
genetic analysis suggest that humans and all other living species are descended
from bacteria-like microbes that first appeared about 4 billion years ago. But
bacteria, appearances notwithstanding, are very complex. They can be packed with
thousands of genes, along with proteins and other molecules, working together in an
intricate struggle to stay alive. Most scientists agree that such DNA-based life
probably emerged from a much simpler life-form that no longer exists on Earth.
Szostak wants to figure out what that first life-form was by building it (or
something close to it) in his lab.

Szostak, 51, embarked on this quest to re-create the ancestor of us all because he
was bored with yeast. After years of studying yeast genes in search of insights
into how human DNA works, he was looking for a challenge. He found it two decades
ago after a spectacular discovery upended conventional wisdom about ribonucleic
acid, or RNA, one of the fundamental building blocks of life.

Biochemists once viewed RNA as a lowly cellular messenger. Genes, made of double-
stranded DNA, contain information for making proteins. This genetic code is
embodied in long strings of chemical compounds called nucleotides and is copied
onto RNA molecules, which then get shipped to ribosomes, biochemical factories
where protein molecules are manufactured. Once completed, proteins curl up into
complex shapes that let them do the actual work of life. Some proteins give an
organism�s body its structure, whether in the cell�s internal skeleton or in a
strand of hair. Other proteins, known as enzymes, can grab other proteins, cut them
apart, or weld them to other proteins. DNA depends on enzymes to make new copies of
its code as well as to translate it into RNA.

In the early 1980s Tom Cech, then a young biologist at the University of Colorado
at Boulder, uncovered evidence that RNA does more than simply relay messages from
DNA to proteins. In an experiment that earned him a Nobel Prize, he found that a
single-celled creature named Tetrahymena possessed some RNA molecules that could
act like simple enzymes. These molecules, which came to be known as ribozymes,
twisted into a complicated snarl that allowed them to hack themselves apart. In
other words, RNA could carry information like DNA and carry out biochemistry the
way proteins do.

The discovery of ribozymes not only changed our understanding of how life works
today, but it also offered insights into the origin of life itself. Scientists
believe that life on Earth emerged from carbon compounds and other simple
chemicals. But it has long been a mystery how those raw materials were transformed
into DNA. After all, DNA can�t survive without proteins. So the question has been:
What came before DNA?

RNA could be the answer. Watching ribozymes at work revealed how primordial RNA
could store genetic information and act like an enyzme. In theory, simple RNA-based
life-forms could have spread and evolved for millions of years. Perhaps they
eventually evolved the ability to assemble proteins as well as build DNA molecules.
Because DNA and proteins did their jobs better than RNA, maybe they eventually took
over these tasks.

Szostak saw in this theory a calling. �I thought, I can figure out something
different to do, where we could contribute something,� he says. In a world before
DNA, RNA molecules would have had to be a lot more accomplished than the
Tetrahymena ribozyme. Most important of all, RNA would have to function as an
enzyme (known as a replicase) that could replicate other RNA molecules. So Szostak
began to tinker with RNA molecules from Tetrahymena and other organisms to see if
he could make one.

In 1991 he and graduate students Jennifer Doudna and Rachel Green succeeded in
making a crude prototype. They created a molecule that could grab shorter chunks of
RNA and make copies of them. It was a remarkable achievement, but Szostak knew it
was only a small step toward something that could accurately be called alive.

The Szostak Lab

We are interested in the chemical and physical processes that facilitated the
transition from chemical evolution to biological evolution on the early earth. As a
way of exploring these processes, our laboratory is trying to build a synthetic
cellular system that undergoes Darwinian evolution. Our view of what such a
chemical system would look like centers on a model of a primitive cell, or
protocell, that consists of two main components: a self-replicating genetic polymer
and a self-replicating membrane boundary. The job of the genetic polymer is to
carry information in a way that allows for both replication and variation, so that
new sequences that encode useful functions can be inherited and can further evolve.
The role of the protocell membrane is to keep these informational polymers
localized, so that the functions they encode lead to an advantage in terms of their
own replication or survival. Such a system should, given time and the right
environment, begin to evolve in a Darwinian fashion, potentially leading to the
spontaneous emergence of genomically encoded catalysts and structural molecules.

The NASA Astrobiology Institute Concludes Its 20-year Tenure

The NASA Astrobiology Program has announced a bold new structure to mobilize the
astrobiology community towards both impacting future NASA space missions and
answering the fundamental questions of; How does life begin and evolve? Does life
exist elsewhere in the Universe? How do we search for life in the Universe? This
new approach includes a system of virtual collaboration consisting of �Research
Coordination Networks� (RCNs). These RCNs are designed to enable the research
community to self-organize, collaborate, communicate, and network across
organizational, divisional, and geographical boundaries.

PART B

2.It�s hard to say, since rocks that would have recorded evidence of any life from
before the Hadean were destroyed by the �late heavy bombardment� that battered the
planet at the time. The oldest isotopic evidence of life comes from rocks that
formed 3.83 billion years ago, soon after the bombardment ended.

But heat-loving microbes appear to be among the Earth�s earliest life-forms, and
may have developed as early as 4.4 billion years ago. That�s when the hot young
Earth � whose top few hundred kilometres had probably been vaporised 100 million
years before, in the impact that formed the Moon � would have cooled enough for
seas to form.

Says Mojzsis: �For all intents and purposes, life could have started 4.4 billion
years ago, and the late heavy bombardment pruned, rather than frustrated, life.�

3.cyanobacteria

4.a calcareous mound built up of layers of lime-secreting cyanobacteria and trapped

sediment, found in Precambrian rocks as the earliest known fossils, and still being
formed in lagoons in Australasia.

5. 4.6 billion years ago Earth forms

3.4 billion years ago First photosynthetic bacteria appear
2.7 billion years ago Cyanobacteria become the first oxygen producers
2.4 � 2.3 billion years ago Earliest evidence (from rocks) that oxygen was in the
atmospheric
1.2 billion years ago Red and brown algae become structurally more complex than
bacteria
0.75 billion years ago Green algae outperform red and brown algae in the strong
light of shallow water
0.475 billion years ago First land plants � mosses and liverworts
0.423 billion years ago Vascular plants evolve

6.Despite their many similarities, mitochondria (and chloroplasts) aren't free-

living bacteria anymore. The first eukaryotic cell evolved more than a billion
years ago. Since then, these organelles have become completely dependent on their
host cells. For example, many of the key proteins needed by the mitochondrion are
imported from the rest of the cell. Sometime during their long-standing
relationship, the genes that code for these proteins were transferred from the
mitochondrion to its host's genome. Scientists consider this mixing of genomes to
be the irreversible step at which the two independent organisms become a single
individual.

7.Nucleus, ribosomes, endoplasmic reticulum, Golgi apparatus, vacuoles, lysosomes

and mitochondria are some membrances which bound organelles in Eukaryotic cells.

8.Multicellular organisms have evolved from pre existing single celled organisms

9.Oxygen fluctuations stalled life on Earth

Given the importance of oxygen for animals, researchers suspected that a sudden
increase in the gas to near-modern levels in the ocean could have spurred the
Cambrian explosion

10.Dinosaurs first appeared between 247 and 240 million years ago. They ruled the
Earth for about 175 million years until an extinction event 65.5 million years ago
wiped out all of them, expect for the avian dinosaurs.

11.The Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event, or the K-T event, is the name given to
the die-off of the dinosaurs and other species that took place some 65.5 million
years ago. For many years, paleontologists believed this event was caused by
climate and geological changes that interrupted the dinosaurs' food supply.

12. 7,794,798,739