World.- Exposure to cyanide it could have been the precursor that originated the first forms of life on Earth. Although this is only a hypothesis, a group of researchers has found evidence that suggests that the answer to the origin of life may lie in this deadly gas used as a chemical weapon today.
Although it seems contradictory that a gas that causes death can give rise to life on earth, a recent investigation carried out by chemists at the Scripps Research Institute, has allowed us to understand a little about how the formation of life on other planets intervenes.
According to the researchers, this deadly gas was a key part in the formation of self-replicating elements As the RNA, But as long as it will be found under specific conditions.
“When we look for signs of life – whether on early Earth or on other planets – we rely on biochemistry that we know exists in life today. The fact that these same metabolic reactions can be driven by cyanide shows that life can be very different,” explains Dr. Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy, associate professor of chemistry at Scripps Research, and lead author of the new paper,” mentions research published in the journal Nature Chemistry.
According to the research, some forms of life such as bacteria that exist on Earth today use a series of chemical reactions called reverse tricarboxylic acid cycle (r-TCA cycle) to metabolize dioxide and water found in chemical compounds. This finding has triggered the suspicion that this metabolic cycle occurred on the primitive Earth to form the first molecules necessary for life.
Although scientists believe that the r-TCA cycle it was the one that promoted the formation of the first molecules of life, clarified that for this process to occur, a set of proteins must be present that would not have existed before life evolved, however they believe that more than 4 billion years ago, the presence of certain metals could have produced the same reactions without current proteins, weight only under extremely acidic conditions.
The answer to this hypothesis was found by Krishnamurth and his team, who agreed that the only molecule that could moderately stimulate this reaction is cyanide, which was already present in the atmosphere of early Earth.
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The scientists replicated this situation, combining cyanide and carbon dioxide and as expected, this experiment worked and the cyanide molecules acted instead of the proteins; “How simple it was was terrifying”commented Krishnamurthy who added that they just had to mix the molecules and wait for the reaction to happen.
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