Life Begins

A. Biogenesis
B. Fossil Dating
C. Abiogenesis
D. Where Did Life Begin?
E. The First Life-forms

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A. Biogenesis

1. Spontaneous generation was

once believed to be the
origin of life
2. Francesco Redi discovered
that maggots came from
eggs (biogenesis)_
3. Lazzaro Spallanzani –
a. showed that when air was
kept out, microbes did
not grow
b. Some believed that the
air contained a
“vital force”_
4. Louis Pasteur - showed that
air did not possess a “vital
force”_
 B. Fossil Dating

1. Radioactive dating has been

used to find exact ages of
fossils
a. an isotope’s half-life is
the time it takes for
half of the isotope to
decay
b. Earth is shown to be 4.6
billion years old
c. Formed as debris that
circled the sun
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coalesced_
C. Abiogenesis

1. Alexander Oparin – Believed

Earth’s primitive atmosphere
contained NH3, H2, H2O, and
CH4
a. As Earth cooled, lightning
and ultraviolet radiation
formed organic
compounds that
precipitated into a
“Primordial Soup”
b. coacervates (small lipid-
like membranes) may
have formed_
 2. Stanley Miller and Harold
Urey – set up an experiment
to test Oparin’s theory
a. formation of small organic
molecules including
amino acids
b. microspheres (small
protein membranes) may
then have formed as
amino acids joined_

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3. Space Debris
a. organic molecules may
have formed elsewhere
in the universe
b. these compounds may
have arrived on
meteors_
D. Where Did Life Begin?

1. Many scientists believe that

deep-sea hydrothermal
vents may have been the
location of life’s origin
a. CO2 in the atmosphere
may have interfered
with Miller-Urey
results_
E. The First Life-forms

1. RNA was probably the first

nucleic hereditary material
a. RNA molecules can
self-replicate
b. RNA is necessary to
catalyze protein
synthesis
c. Ribozymes – RNA
enzymes_
2. Prokaryotes
a. Early prokaryotes would
have been anaerobic
chemoheterotrophs
b. As organic material ran low,
anaerobic
chemoautotrophs would
have followed
c. Photoautotrophs would have
come next
(cyanobacteria)
d. Aerobic chemoheterotrophs
would have followed_
3. Eukaryotes
a. the inner folding of the
membrane- nucleus & ER
b. engulfing of prokaryotes-
mitochondrion
& chloroplast
(endosymbiosis)_
THE END