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#originsoflife — Public Fediverse posts

Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #originsoflife, aggregated by home.social.

  1. How can we predict chemical reactions more accurately? Robert Mayer, our newly appointed Professor of Physical-Organic Chemistry of Catalysis, explores this question. Using automated experiments and data-driven models, he investigates catalytic reactions to identify optimal conditions for chemical syntheses more quickly. Learn more in the latest NewIn episode: go.tum.de/806519

    ▶️youtu.be/xE8o-HLqPV8

    #Catalysis #ChemicalResearch #OriginsofLife

    📹TUM ProLehre
    📷A. Heddergott

  2. Could the #ribosome be a selfish element? @mkrupovic & Eugene Koonin propose that the #evolution of life can viewed as a ribosomal takeover, where the ribosome evolved to consume most of the cell’s resources.
    #OriginsOfLife
    plos.io/3OPZszf

  3. Asteroid Ryugu Yields Key Life Ingredients

    Scientists found all 5 DNA/RNA building blocks in asteroid Ryugu samples. This suggests life's ingredients may come from space.

    #AsteroidRyugu, #LifeOnEarth, #SpaceMolecules, #Hayabusa2, #OriginsOfLife

    newsletter.tf/asteroid-ryugu-d

  4. A meteorite impact helped kickstart life on Earth. 🌍💥 The world’s oldest known crater may hold answers to how life began. Just imagine—without cosmic chaos, we might not exist! #Astrobiology #OriginsOfLife independent.co.uk/space/worlds

  5. The physics of cold water may have jump-started complex life. Cold environments could have concentrated key molecules, enabling the chemical processes needed for early life forms to evolve. This challenges assumptions that warmth was essential for life’s origins, showing how physical conditions can shape biology unexpectedly. #OriginsOfLife #Biophysics #ScienceInnovation
    quantamagazine.org/the-physics

  6. How did life on Earth begin? Theories abound, from life emerging through primordial soup processes where organic molecules formed spontaneously to panspermia, suggesting life’s building blocks were delivered by asteroids or comets. The transition from single-celled organisms to complex multicellular life remains an area of intense study. Understanding this evolution could provide insight into life’s potential existence elsewhere and deepen our grasp of our origins.#OriginsOfLife #Biology #Earth

  7. A team at ORIGINS, a Munich-based Cluster of Excellence, demonstrates how early #RNA molecules could have stabilized, offering insights into the #OriginsOfLife on Earth: go.tum.de/343119 🧬

    #biochemistry #hybridization #primordialsoup

    📷A. Eckert

  8. The researchers, whose study was published in the journal #Nature #Geoscience, found that through a newly discovered process, masses made of #minerals such as #manganese & #iron …can produce #oxygen even in complete darkness. Organisms normally need light to produce oxygen through #photosynthesis, but researchers believe electrochemical activity produced by these masses —called polymetallic nodules— can extract oxygen from #water.

    #DarkOxygen #ocean #OriginsOfLife #Earth #Science

  9. Cool

    Scientists find ‘#DarkOxygen’ being produced from #metals on the #seafloor
    
Organisms normally need light to produce #oxygen through #photosynthesis.

Scientists have found evidence that metals naturally occurring on the #ocean floor may be able to produce oxygen — a potential “game changer” they say could change our understanding of the #OriginsOfLife on #Earth.

    #Science
    washingtonpost.com/science/202

  10. biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/20

    Oxygen processing and electron transport infrastructure in 'Asgard' archaea.

    These are the closest relatives to the multi-celled complex lifeforms we see.

    Their discovery completely changed how scientists understand the tree of life.

    This paper discovers Asgard species and proteins that allow them to 'breathe' oxygen. It was thought archea absorbed bacteria for oxygen processing, but that might not be necessary.

    #originsoflife #archaea #eukaryogenesis #evolution

  11. "Today, my colleagues in astrobiology no longer assume that life started at hot vents deep in the oceans. For many, the focus has shifted to locales on land — notably hot spring environments. This shift has also transformed science’s consideration of where life might start in the universe and how common it could be, and provides an upgraded framework to address the age-old question: Are we alone?"

    #BruceDamer, 2024

    lucid.news/a-psychedelic-journ

    #astrobiology #OriginsOfLife

  12. There might be some merits to this screamingly terrible #AssemblyTheory paper on the #OriginsofLife in #Nature I haven’t been able to catch yet, but it certainly doesn’t help your case when the answer to criticism involves rambling about “virtue signaling,” “getting triggered,” and “offending your worldview” on #Xittler, topped off by the usual misappropriation of Kuhn.

    Screenshots from the infernal cesspit taken by me.

  13. The Vital Question by Nick Lane is a game-changing book about the origins of life. It explores why sex exists, why there are only two sexes, why we age and die, and how energy is the key to understanding all of these questions. #TheVitalQuestion #NickLane #OriginsOfLife

    theguardian.com/technology/201

  14. Threatened Mexican oasis loses its main researcher and protector — will it survive?
    nature.com/articles/d41586-023
    "Valeria Souza has long fought the drainage of the Cuatro Ciénegas basin, where ancient microbes offer clues to the origins of life."
    #Mexico #Oasis #OriginsOfLife #LostTheBattle to the #KillerVirus aka #Humans

  15. `For the team of researchers, these results are pretty clear. “Hence, we suggest that GCRs (Galactic Cosmic Rays) and SEP (Solar Energetic Particle) events from the young Sun represent the most effective energy sources for the prebiotic formation of biologically important organic compounds from weakly reducing atmospheres.”`

    universetoday.com/161212/solar

    #originsOfLife #life #origins #livingPlanet #birth #solarFlares #radiation #cosmicRays #energy #particles #bombardment #ions #gasPhase #stars #Sun

  16. "Inside Ancient Asteroids, Gamma Rays Made Building Blocks of Life. A new radiation-based mechanism adds to the ways that amino acids could have been made in space and brought to the young Earth."

    Quanta: quantamagazine.org/inside-anci

    "Last spring, scientists revealed that the chemical composition of the asteroid includes 10 amino acids, the building blocks of proteins.

    But where did these amino acids come from? The amino acids flowing through our ecosystems are products of cellular metabolism, mostly in plants. What nonbiological mechanism could have put them in meteorites and asteroids?

    Scientists have thought of several ways, and recent work by researchers in Japan points to a significant new one: a mechanism that uses gamma rays to forge amino acids. Their discovery makes it seem even more likely that meteorites could have contributed to the origin of life on Earth."

    #DNA #originsoflife #panspermia #asteroids