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    Classic Experiments That Lead To The Discovery of First Life

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    Mae Kaila Pasionela Gicana
    Classic experiments helped discover the origin of life: 1) Stanley Miller's electrical discharge experiment in 1953 simulated early Earth's conditions and produced amino acids. 2) Sidney Fox's thermal synthesis experiment in the 1950s heated amino acids to form protenoid microspheres that reproduced, demonstrating a potential pre-cellular form. 3) Jack Szostak's protocell experiment in the 1990s created lipid vesicles containing RNA that could undergo Darwinian evolution, supporting the idea that early life was based on self-replicating nucleic acids encapsulated within lipid membranes.

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    Classic Experiments That Lead To The Discovery of First Life

    Uploaded by

    Mae Kaila Pasionela Gicana
    43 views10 pages
    Classic experiments helped discover the origin of life: 1) Stanley Miller's electrical discharge experiment in 1953 simulated early Earth's conditions and produced amino acids. 2) Sidney Fox's thermal synthesis experiment in the 1950s heated amino acids to form protenoid microspheres that reproduced, demonstrating a potential pre-cellular form. 3) Jack Szostak's protocell experiment in the 1990s created lipid vesicles containing RNA that could undergo Darwinian evolution, supporting the idea that early life was based on self-replicating nucleic acids encapsulated within lipid membranes.

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    Life science

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    Presentation 1

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    Classic experiments helped discover the origin of life: 1) Stanley Miller's electrical discharge experiment in 1953 simulated early Earth's conditions and produced amino acids. 2) Sidney Fox's thermal synthesis experiment in the 1950s heated amino acids to form protenoid microspheres that reproduced, demonstrating a potential pre-cellular form. 3) Jack Szostak's protocell experiment in the 1990s created lipid vesicles containing RNA that could undergo Darwinian evolution, supporting the idea that early life was based on self-replicating nucleic acids encapsulated within lipid membranes.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pptx, pdf, or txt
    43 views10 pages

    Classic Experiments That Lead To The Discovery of First Life

    Uploaded by

    Mae Kaila Pasionela Gicana
    Classic experiments helped discover the origin of life: 1) Stanley Miller's electrical discharge experiment in 1953 simulated early Earth's conditions and produced amino acids. 2) Sidney Fox's thermal synthesis experiment in the 1950s heated amino acids to form protenoid microspheres that reproduced, demonstrating a potential pre-cellular form. 3) Jack Szostak's protocell experiment in the 1990s created lipid vesicles containing RNA that could undergo Darwinian evolution, supporting the idea that early life was based on self-replicating nucleic acids encapsulated within lipid membranes.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pptx, pdf, or txt
    of 10

    Classic Experiments that

    Lead to the Discovery of


    First Life
    About 4.6 billion years ago, the Earth
    began to exist. The existence of life, as
    believed by many scientists, started from
    the moment the Earth’s environment
    became stable to support life. Several
    theories were proposed to explain life’s
    origin. One of these theories is the
    primordial soup theory proposed by
    Alexander Oparin and John Haldane.
    • Several scientists conducted different
    experiments that modeled conditions
    which may have enabled the first life
    forms to evolve. Among these
    experiments are the Electrical
    Discharge Experiment, Thermal
    Synthesis, and The Protocell
    Experiment.
    Electrical Discharge Experiment

    • Stanley Miller and Harold Urey verified the


    primordial soup theory by simulating the
    formation of organic molecules on the
    early Earth. They confined methane,
    ammonia, water, and hydrogen in a closed
    system and applied continuous electrical
    sparks to trigger the formation of the
    building blocks of life.
    Electrical Discharge Experiment

    • After a day, they observed a change of


    color in the solution. After a week, the
    solution was tested, and they found out
    that several amino acids were
    produced. The purpose of this
    experiment was not to try and produce
    amino acids, rather, its purpose was to
    explore the conditions of the early Earth
    and what the naturally occurring results
    would be.
    Electrical Discharge Experiment
    Thermal Synthesis

    • Sidney Fox demonstrated in his


    experiment the origin of life using a
    specific mixture of pure, dry amino
    acids. In his experiment, after heating
    the mixture, an aqueous solution was
    formed and cooled into microscopic
    globules called protenoid microspheres.
    Thermal Synthesis

    • The globules looked like coccoid


    bacteria and seemed to be budding,
    which is a form of reproduction in some
    microorganisms. He claimed that the
    protenoid microspheres constituted
    protocells – almost true cells, and
    multiplied through division like true
    cells. He believed that these cells were
    the link between the primordial
    environment and the true living cells.
    The Protocell Experiment

    • Jack Szostak contemplated on how early


    life forms formed in a primordial chemical
    environment. He then thought that the
    simplest possible living cells or protocells
    just required two components to be
    formed: a nucleic acid genome to transmit
    the genetic information and a lipid sac
    which encapsulated the genome and let
    itself grow and divide.
    The Protocell Experiment

    • Szostak built lipid sacs made in fatty acids


    and a replicase – an RNA molecule that
    catalyzes its own replication, in the test
    tube. He found out that lipid sacs with
    more RNA grew faster. He suggested that
    such test tube evolution was possible. The
    results suggested that the early forms of
    life with just a single gene, an RNA gene,
    could have undergone a Darwinian
    evolution.

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