SECTION 5

Brief History of Life on Earth

● We look at the earth after the big bang more than 4.6 billion years ago
● Primitive earth: The planet was formed as strongly reducing or oxygen-less atmosphere
○ Common gases that are present in the atmosphere were methane hydrogen carbon dioxide and
ammonia
○ Sources of energy on primitive earth: Volcanic eruptions, storms, and lightning charges (very
chaotic world)
○ Oceanic world: The earth is actually covered with water and these conditions along with
sufficient time provided the requirements for a chemical abiotic evolution
● Life was said to first exist 3.8 billion years ago
○ Given the conditions of the on the primitive earth we asked these questions “why was there no
life between 4.6 billion years ago which was the the formation of the earth and 3.8 billion years
ago?” and “which is the first existence of life form?” and “how did life actually start or begin?”
○ Scientists believe that life was first formed through chemical abiotic evolution during the time of
primitive earth
■ The existence of living life forms is close to impossible
● There are several hypotheses on how life started billion years ago and the most popular one is
proposed by two scientists Oparin and Haldane
○ According to them, the earth's atmosphere is consisted of compounds such as water, hydrogen,
methane, and ammonia but lacked oxygen
○ Because of this, the earth's atmosphere back then was termed reducing or the compounds
present in the atmosphere tends to donate electrons to other compounds and this condition was
conducive to prebiotic organic synthesis or the formation of organic compounds through the
ultraviolet radiation which served as the source of energy for the chemical reaction
○ The gas mixtures present in the atmosphere formed organic compounds such as sugars and
amino acids and Haldane proposed that these organic compounds were accumulated in the
primitive ocean (termed as primordial soup)
○ Earth was covered with water and this water or recall the primitive ocean actually contains
organic compounds that were produced by the chemical reactions in the atmosphere and this
broth containing organic compounds could have assembled to form earliest structures capable
of guiding their own replication and later on forming the first form of life
○ These chemical reactions of simple gaseous compounds are only possible if there is a
continuous source of free energy, and one clear source of the needed energy is the ultraviolet
radiation from the sun
■ Another possible source is the electrical charges released by lightning during
thunderstorms and other scientists actually believed and hypothesized that life originated
from the bottom of the ocean in and around hydrothermal vents
● Stanley Miller and Harold Urey designed an experiment to test the hypothesis proposed by Oparin and
Haldane
○ Simulated the conditions thought to prevail on the primitive earth

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 ○
○ Water in the flask is boiled to produce steam and the steam helped the gases to circulate inside
the apparatus
○ Inside apparatus contains a mixture of hydrogen, ammonia, and methane which are gases that
are present or believed to be present in the primitive earth's atmosphere
○ The electrical charges produced by electrodes represents the lightning which was believed to be
the energy source on the primitive earth
○ The product that was formed was condensed and concentrated on the condenser and collected
in a flask which represents the ocean
○ The substances formed in the experiment were compounds found in the living organisms which
were actually organic substances
○ Suggests that prebiotic synthesis on primitive earth may have occurred under the condition
similar from Miller and Urey experiment
● Producing organic compounds on the primitive earth is possible through prebiotic synthesis but what
was created in the synthesis are monomers or just simple units of larger organic compounds which is
actually needed or essential for living organisms to exist
○ Given the condition of on the primitive earth how is it possible to form larger molecules so in
order to create larger molecules such as proteins, nucleic acids, and other organic compounds
○ The simple molecules or the monomers produced during the prebiotic synthesis should undergo
polymerization
■ A process wherein the monomers are linked together by the removal of water in a
reaction called condensation or dehydration reaction
■ The problem now is that these monomers produced in primitive earth were collected in
the ocean and the condensation reaction or the dehydration reaction will not occur
because of the excess water
■ Instead the reaction drives towards the composition or hydrolysis
● How did chemical reaction proceed toward the evolution of cellular life and how can the subunits of
macromolecules be concentrated to form the polymers?
○ The reaction became possible because of the amphiphilic molecules that were believed to be
present in the ocean (water on primitive earth) and these are molecules containing both
hydrophobic and hydrophilic groups
*Previous lecture: organic compound has a similar property -- lipids, specifically phospholipids
which are essential of creating the cellular membrane
● The amphiphilic molecules present in the primitive earth forms membrane-bound vesicles called the
microspheres, when in acute solution tends to concentrate inside the vesicle organic compounds or
organic macromolecules
● David Deamer proposed that extraterrestrial materials falling on the primordial earth are an important
source of compounds that can self assemble and produce amphiphilic molecules

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 ○ They examined the molecules or samples of molecules coming from a meteorite and the
amphiphiles extracted from the Murchison meteorite were composed of fatty acids and long
chain proteins
○ If in an accurate solution it forms a semipermeable membrane similar to that of living organisms
that effectively encapsulate amino acids and nucleotides which promotes dehydration synthesis
○ With these conditions, the formation of life became possible
● The first living organisms were called protocells
○ Membrane-bound units that are living autonomous and self-reproducing in the latter stage of
chemical evolution
○ Nucleic acids which are the DNA and the RNA became genetic systems directing the synthesis
of the proteins

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