Scientists recently created a mixture of simple chemicals that produced an amazing fungus-like structure!
The weird growths are made purely from inorganic materials, but they share some of the characteristics of living organisms.
Minutes after the chemicals were mixed, a marble-sized blob formed. It had a semipermeable membrane. Daughter cells began to bud off from the original cell. Wild!
Most chemical mixtures quickly settle into an unchanging state. So the fact that dynamic cell-like structures can arise spontaneously from a simple mixture is a surprise, says Jerzy Masleko of the University of Alaska in Anchorage and Peter Strizhak of the Institute of Physical Chemistry in Kiev, Ukraine, who made the discovery.
Understanding how this happens could give us clues about how life may have arisen on Earth, or even other planets, where the blends of chemicals present might be quite different from that of the early Earth."
Recently, MIT chemist Julius
Rebek created an organic molecule that reproduces itself --
a molecule that Rebek considers a primitive form of life.
Whether or not it is truly alive, it is definitely not life as we know
it. Rebek's J-shaped
molecule is held together by some of the same
chemical bonds as proteins, DNA, and RNA -- but the molecule
reproduces in a chloroform solution! (Life on earth probably evolved
in water.) For those of you who are chemists, this primitive
life form consists of an amino adenosine triacid ester.
In a solution, Rebek's molecules can copy themselves at rates up to
a dizzying million times per second.
Click here for more information on Life from Nonlife.
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