How it took place before – the origin of life – and how often it could happen are posed as an enigma to be solved at this time. Precisely to help answer these questions, a new study combined biological and cosmological models, concluding that the building blocks for life could spontaneously form in the universe through abiogenesis.
The origin of life through abiogenesis remains a great mystery in science
The work of this group of scientists led by Tomoroni Totani, like almost all work on abiogenesis, analyzes the basic components of life on Earth : RNA or ribonucleic acid. DNA sets the rules for how individual life forms take shape, but DNA is much more complex than RNA and its simplicity compared to DNA makes it more likely to occur through abiogenesis.
There is also a theory in evolution that says that although DNA carries the instructions for building an organism, it is RNA that regulates the transcription of DNA sequences. It’s called RNA-based evolution, and it states that RNA is subject to Darwinian natural selection, and it is also heritable. That is one of the reasons to choose RNA over DNA.
“This is a much simpler and more essential molecule than the more famous DNA that defines how we come together,” explains Totani.
RNA is a polymer, which means that it is made up of chemical chains , in this case known as nucleotides. Given enough time, nucleotides can spontaneously connect to form RNA with the correct chemical conditions and form a strand to meet that length requirement. But the question is , has there been enough time in the life of the universe? If we are here, the answer seems to be yes.
According to the study, “current estimates suggest that the magic number of 40 to 100 nucleotides should not have been possible in the volume of space that we consider the observable universe.” “However, there is more to the universe than is observable,” Totani said.
What is important here is the term ‘ observable universe ‘.
In contemporary cosmology, it is accepted that the universe underwent a period of rapid inflation that produced a vast region of expansion beyond the horizon of our ability to directly observe, where our observable universe contains only 1,022 stars. Statistically speaking, matter in such a volume should only be capable of producing RNA of about 20 nucleotides.
But thanks to rapid inflation, the universe can contain more than 10,100 stars, and if this is the case, then the most complex and life-sustaining RNA structures are more than likely: they are practically unavoidable, even if the possibilities are. infinitely small.
What would that process be like?
At the moment we do not know. Totani’s study has not provided an answer, but like much scientific work, it helps refine the question and invites others to study it.
“Combining my recent research on RNA chemistry with my long history of cosmology leads me to realize that there is a plausible way the universe has gone from an abiotic to a biotic state. It is an exciting thought and I hope that research can build on this to discover the origins of life, “says Totoni.
Referencia: Tomonori Totani. Emergence of life in an inflationary universe, Scientific Reports (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-58060-0
