Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T00:10:15.515Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

19 - Coarse-tuning in the origin of life?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2009

By
Guy Ourisson
Edited by
John D. Barrow ,
Simon Conway Morris ,
Stephen J. Freeland  and
Charles L. Harper, Jr
Guy Ourisson
Affiliation:
Centre de Neurochimie, Université Louis Pasteur
John D. Barrow
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Simon Conway Morris
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Stephen J. Freeland
Affiliation:
University of Maryland, Baltimore
Charles L. Harper, Jr
Affiliation:
John Templeton Foundation
Get access

Summary

Like others (see for instance Oparin, 1968; Monod, 1970), I too am convinced that the origin of life will be eventually understood in scientific, rational terms. However, I recognize, of course, that so far it remains an unsolved problem, and even an unfathomable one. We scientists are playing with partial explanatory hypotheses and have few hard facts at our disposal. Therefore, we must remain humble in attempting to describe each scenario and be careful to discuss each one's constraints, recognizing where the scenarios may be flexible to synthesis with other hypotheses. Thus, my present discussion explores some areas in which there may indeed be some flexibility in terms of what solutions could potentially lead to living systems – in other words, where some “coarse-tuning” might be tolerable.

Specifically, I address the following series of questions:

  1. Is life necessarily based on carbon?

  2. Must the “bricks of life” have originated by some process closely related to Miller's “spark tube” experiment, or do other possibilities exist?

  3. Is it necessary that any kind of life be associated with water from the start?

  4. Is it necessary for any kind of life to be cellular and for the cells to be bounded in water by membranes?

  5. Are the n-acyl phospholipids of “classical” membranes, or the more recently discovered archaeal lipids, plausible constituents of primitive membranes?

  6. Could early membrane-forming amphiphiles have simply been polyprenyl phosphates, following the “Strasbourg scenario” (Birault et al., 1996)?

  7. Are there automatic consequences of the self-organization of amphiphiles (such as polyprenyl phosphates) in water into membranes, and does this lead to novel properties? Specifically, I consider the available evidence for the following features of membranes:

  8. […]

Type
Chapter
Information
Fitness of the Cosmos for Life
Biochemistry and Fine-Tuning
 , pp. 421 - 439
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arundale, E. and Mikeska, L. A. (1952). The Prins reaction. Chemical Reviews, 51, 505–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bachmann, P. A., Walde, P., Luisi, P. L. and Lang, J. (1990). Self-replicating reverse micelles and chemical autopoiesis. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 112, 8200–1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bachmann, P. A., Walde, P., Luisi, P. L. and Long, J. (1991). Self-replicating micelles: aqueous micelles and enzymatically driven reactions in reverse micelles. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 113, 8204–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bada, J. L. and Lazcano, A. (2003). Origin of life – some like it hot, but not the first biomolecules. Science, 300, 745–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baltcheffsky, M. and Baltcheffsky, H. (1992). Inorganic pyrophosphate and inorganic pyrophosphatases. In Molecular Mechanisms in Bioenergetics: New Comprehensive Biochemistry, ed. Ernster, L.. Amsterdam: Elsevier, pp. 331–48.Google Scholar
Bernstein, M. P., Dworkin, J. P., Sandford, S. A.et al. (2002). Racemic amino acids from the ultra-violet photolysis of interstellar ice analogues. Nature, 416, 401–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Birault, V., Pozzi, G., Plobeck, N.et al. (1996). Di(polyprenyl) phosphates as models for primitive membrane constituents: synthesis and phase properties. Chemistry – a European Journal, 2, 789–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Biron, J.-P. and Pascal, R. (2004). Amino acid N-carboxyanhydrides: activated peptide monomers behaving as phosphate-activating agents in aqueous solution. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 126, 9198–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bisseret, P., Wolff, G., Albrecht, A.-M.et al. (1983). A direct study of the cohesion of lecithin bilayers: the effect of hopanoids and dihydroxycarotenoids. Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications, 110, 320–4.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Blocher, M., Liu, D., Walde, P.et al. (1999). Liposome-assisted selective polycondensation of α-amino acids and peptides. Macromolecules, 32, 7332–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blokzijl, W. and Engberts, J. B. F. N. (1993). Hydrophobic effects. Opinions and facts. Angewandte Chemie International Edition, 32, 545–79. (In English.)Google Scholar
Blomquist, A. T. and Verdol, J. A. (1955). The thermal isobutylene-formaldehyde condensation. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 77, 78–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brace, N. O. (1955). The uncatalyzed thermal addition of formaldehyde to olefins. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 77, 4566–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Büchi, G., Inman, C. G. and Lipinsky, E. S. (1954). Light-catalyzed reactions. I. The reaction of carbonyl compounds with 2-methyl-2-butene in the presence of ultraviolet light. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 76, 4327–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cairns-Smith, A. G. and Hartmann, H., eds. (1986). Clay Minerals and the Origin of Life. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Chrzeszczyk, A., Wishnia, A. and Springer, C. S. Jr. (1977). The intrinsic structural asymmetry of highly curved phospholipid bilayer membranes. Biochimica et Biophysica Acta, 470, 161–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Darwin, C. (1859). On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. London: J. Murray.Google Scholar
Deamer, D. W. (1986). Role of amphiphilic compounds in the evolution of membrane structure on the early earth. Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres, 17, 3–25.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Deamer, D. W. and Barchfeld, G. L. (1982). Encapsulation of macromolecules by lipid vesicles under simulated prebiotic conditions. Journal of Molecular Evolution, 18, 203–6.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Deamer, D. W., Mahon, Harang E. and Bosco, G. (1994). Self-assembly and function of primitive membrane structures. In Early Life on Earth, Nobel Symposium no. 84, ed. S. Bengtson. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, pp. 107–23.Google Scholar
Désaubry, L., Nakatani, Y. and Ourisson, G. (2003). Toward higher polyprenols under “prebiotic” conditions. Tetrahedron Letters, 44, 6959–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Devienne, F. M. and Barnabé, C.Synthesis of biological compounds in quasi-interstellar conditions. Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences, Paris, Series IIc, 435–9.
Devienne, F. M, Barnabé, C., Couderc, M.et al. (1998). Synthesis of silicon–oxygen derivatives in quasi-interstellar conditions. Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences, Paris, Series IIc, 435–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Devienne, F. M., Barnabé, C. and Ourisson, G. (2002). Synthesis of further biological compounds in interstellar-like conditions. Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences, Chimie, 5, 651–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fischer, A., Franco, A. and Oberholzer, T. (2002). Giant vesicles as microreactors for enzymatic mRNA synthesis. ChemBioChem, 3, 409–17.3.0.CO;2-P>CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Folda, T., Gros, L. and Ringsdorf, H. (1982). Formation of oriented polypeptides and polyamides in monolayers and liposomes. Macromolecular Rapid Communications, 3, 167–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fraley, R., Subramani, S., Berg, P.et al. (1980). Introduction of liposome-encapsulated SV40 DNA into cells. Journal of Biological Chemistry, 255, 10431–5.Google ScholarPubMed
Fukuda, K., Shibasaki, Y. and Nakahara, H. (1981). Polycondensation of long-chain esters of α-amino acids in monolayers at air/water interface and in multilayers on solid surface. Journal of Macromolecular Science, A: Pure and Applied Chemistry, 15, 999–1014.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ghosh, S., Lee, S. J., Ito, K.et al. (2000). Molecular recognition on giant vesicles: coating of phytyl phosphate vesicles with a polysaccharide bearing phytyl chains. Chemical Communications, pp. 267–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Israelachvili, J. N., Marcelja, S. and Horn, R. G. (1980). Physical principles of membrane organization. Quarterly Review of Biophysics, 13, 121–200.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jay, D. G. and Gilbert, W. (1987). Basic protein enhances the incorporation of DNA into lipid vesicles: model for the formation of primordial cells. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 84, 1978–80.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Krajewski-Bertrand, M. A., Hayer, M. and Wolff, G. (1990). Tricyclohexaprenol and an octaprenediol, two of the “primitive” amhiphilic lipids, do improve phospholipidic membranes. Tetrahedron, 46, 3143–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lazrak, T., Wolff, G., Albrecht, A. M.et al. (1988). Bacterioruberins reinforce reconstituted Halobacterium lipid membranes. Biochimica et Biophysica Acta, 939, 160–2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, S., Désaubry, L., Nakatani, Y.et al. (2002). Vectorial properties of small phytanyl phosphate vesicles. Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences, Chimie, 5, 331–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lemieux, R. U. (1996). How water provides the impetus for molecular recognition in aqueous solution. Accounts of Chemical Research, 29, 375–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maddox, J. (1994). Origin of the first cell membranes?Nature, 371, 101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, S. J. (1953). A production of amino-acids under possible primitive earth conditions. Science, 117, 528–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Miller, S. L. and Orgel, L. E. (1974). The Origins of Life on Earth. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Milon, A., Wolff, G., Ourisson, G.et al. (1986). Organisation of carotenoid–phospholipid bilayer systems: incorporation of zeaxanthin, astaxanthin, and their C50 homologues into dimyristoyl-phosphatidylcholine vesicles. Helvetica Chimica Acta, 69, 12–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Monnard, P. A., Oberholzer, T. and Luisi, P. L. (1997). Entrapment of nucleic acids in liposomes. Biochimica et Biophysica Acta, 1329, 39–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Monod, J. (1970). Le Hasard et la nécessité. Paris: Le Seuil.Google Scholar
Morowitz, H. J. (1992). The Beginnings of Cellular Life. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Morowitz, H. J., Heinz, D. and Deamer, D. W. (1988). The chemical logic of a minimum protocell. Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres, 18, 281–7.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Caro, Muñoz G. M., Meierhenrich, U. J., Schutte, W. A.et al. (2002). Amino-acids from ultra-violet irradiation of interstellar ice analogues. Nature, 416, 403–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nakatani, Y., Yamamoto, M., Diyizou, Y.et al. (1996). Studies on the topography of biomembranes: regioselective photolabelling in vesicles with the tandem use of cholesterol and a photoactivable transmembrane phospholipidic probe. Chemistry – a European Journal, 2, 129–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nomura, S. M., Yoshikawa, Y., Yoshikawa, K.et al. (2001). Towards proto-cells: “primitive” lipid vesicles encapsulating giant DNA and its histone complex. ChemBioChem, 2, 457–9.3.0.CO;2-F>CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nomura, S. M., Tsumoto, K., Hamada, T.et al. (2003). Gene expression within cell-sized lipid vesicles. ChemBioChem, 4, 1172–5.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nordén, B., Lindblom, G. and Jonás. (1977). Linear dichroism spectroscopy as a tool for studying molecular orientation in model membrane systems. Journal of Physical Chemistry, 81, 2086–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oberholzer, T., Albrizio, M. and Luisi, P. L. (1995a). Polymerase chain reaction in liposomes. Current Biology, 2, 677–82.Google Scholar
Oberholzer, T., Wick, R., Luisi, P. L.et al. (1995b). Enzymatic RNA replication in self-reproducing vesicles: an approach to a minimal cell. Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications, 207, 250–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oberholzer, T., Nierhaus, K. H. and Luisi, P. L. (1999). Protein expression in liposomes. Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications, 261, 238–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ohnishi, T., Hatakeyama, M., Yamamoto, N.et al. (1978). Electrical and spectroscopic investigations of molecular layers of fatty acids including carotene. Bulletin of the Chemical Society of Japan, 51, 1714–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oparin, A. I. (1968). Genesis and Evolutionary Development of Life. New York, NY: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Ourisson, G. (1986). Vom Erdöl zur Evolution der Biomembranen (Heinrich-Wieland Lecture). Nachrichten aus Chemie, Technik und Laboratorium, 34, 8–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ourisson, G. and Nakatani, Y. (1994). The terpenoid theory of the origin of cellular life: the evolution of terpenoids to cholesterol. Chemistry and Biology, 1, 11–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ourisson, G. and Nakatani, Y. (1999). Origins of cellular life: molecular foundations and new approaches. Tetrahedron, 55, 3183–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paterno, E. and Chieffi, G. (1909). Light-induced chemical synthesis. Part 2. Reaction of unsaturated hydrocarbons with aldehydes and ketones. Gazzetta Chimica Italiana, 39, 341–50.Google Scholar
Pizzarello, S. (2004). Chemical evolution and meteorites: an update. Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres, 34, 25–34.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pizzarello, S. and Weber, A. L. (2004). Prebiotic amino acids as asymmetric catalysts. Science, 303, 1151.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pozzi, G., Birault, V., Werner, B.et al. (1996) Single-chain polyprenyl phosphates form primitive membranes. Angewandte Chemie, International Edition, 35, 177–79. (In English.)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rico, I. and Lattes, A. (1986). Krafft temperatures and micelle formation of ionic surfactants in formamide. Journal of Physical Chemistry, 90, 5870–2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rohmer, M., Knani, M., Simonin, P.et al. (1993). A novel pathway for the early steps leading to isopentenyl diphosphate. Biochemical Journal, 295, 517–24.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rohmer, M., Seemann, M., Horbach, S.et al. (1996). Glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate and pyruvate as precursors of isoprenic units as an alternative non-mevalonic pathway for terpenoid biosynthesis. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 118, 2564–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwartz, A. W. (1996). Did minerals perform prebiotic combinatorial chemistry?Chemistry and Biology, 3, 515–18.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shapiro, R. (1986). Origins: A Skeptic's Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
Singer, S. J. and Nicolson, G. L. (1972). A mosaic model of cell membranes. Science, 175, 720–2.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sutherland, J. D. and Whitfield, J. N. (1997). Prebiotic chemistry: a bioorganic perspective. Tetrahedron, 53, 11493–527.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swairjo, M. A., Seaton, B. A. and Roberts, M. F. (1994). Effect of vesicle composition and curvature on the dissociation of phosphatidic acid in small unilamellar vesicles – a 31P-NMR study. Biochimica et Biophysica Acta, 191, 354–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Szostak, J. W., Bartel, D. P. and Luisi, P. L. (2001). Synthesizing life. Nature. 409, 387–90.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tanford, C. (1978). The hydrophobic effect and the organization of living matter. Science, 200, 1012–18.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tsumoto, K., Nomura, S. M., Nakatani, Y.et al. (2000). Giant liposome as a biochemical reactor: transcription of DNA and transportation by laser tweezers. Langmuir, 17, 7225–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ueda, T., Lee, S. L., Nakatani, Y.et al. (1998). Coating of POPC giant liposomes with hydroxylated polysaccharide. Chemical Letters, 417–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ven, M., Kattenberg, M., Ginkel, G.et al. (1984). Study of the orientational ordering of carotenoids in lipid bilayers by resonance-Raman spectroscopy. Biophysical Journal, 45, 1203–10.Google ScholarPubMed
Walde, P., Wick, R., Fresta, M.et al. (1994). Autopoietic self-reproduction of fatty acid vesicles. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 116, 11649–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weissbuch, I., Bolbach, G., Leiserowitz, L.et al. (2004). Chiral amplification of oligopeptides via polymerization in two-dimensional crystallites on water. Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres, 34, 79–92.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Westheimer, F. H. (1987). Why nature chose phosphates. Science, 235, 1173–8.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Yamagata, Y., Watanabe, H., Saitoh, M.et al. (1991). Volcanic production of polyphosphate under primitive Earth conditions. Nature, 35, 516–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yu, W., Sato, K., Wakabayashi, M.et al. (2001). Synthesis of functional protein in liposomes. Journal of Bioscience and Bioengineering, 92, 590–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zhou, Z., Okumura, Y. and Sunamoto, J. (1996). NMR study of choline methyl group of phospholipids. Proceedings of the Japan Academy, 72B, 23–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×