Name: Scientists recreated ancient Earth's ocean hell to figure out how life began
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Scientists recreated ancient Earth's ocean hell to figure out how life began

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One theory for how life emerged suggests that it originated in the sea, at . It's impossible to observe life-in-the-making in hydrothermal vents nowadays, though, as the seabed in the billions of years since. Instead, researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have recreated early Earth’s deep-sea conditions in their lab to experimentally verify this theory.&nbsp;, led by Lauren White, has built a reactor that mimics early Earth’s geological processes at the bottom of the ocean. By mixing CO2 and hydrogen-rich fluids — proxies for and alkaline hydrothermal spew — across a reconstruction of an ancient seafloor, the reactor successfully converted CO2 into simple organic molecules.&nbsp;The conversion pathway of CO2 to organic molecules has long confounded scientists. All building blocks of life, from amino acids to DNA strands to sugars, contain carbon. But in Earth’s early years, carbon was mostly locked in the atmosphere as .&nbsp;White and her team at JPL had to build their own reactor, the first experimental attempt to capture all the key conditions in early Earth’s seafloorthen was — like its name suggests — hellish: asteroids pelted the Earth and volcanoes constantly erupted. CO2 levels in the atmosphere were today’s amount, and much of it dissolved into the oceans, turning the water acidic.&nbsp;As the terrestrial world raged above, the ocean floor was also churning. Fresh rock was delivered from deep within Earth’s mantle to the crust above it as if by a geological conveyor belt. The pristine rock readily reacted with seawater to produce hydrogen and the mineral serpentine in a reaction known as . This hydrogen, under the coaxing of iron-rich metals in the seafloor and hydrothermal vents, converted dissolved CO2 into the simplest organic molecules. In the long march towards a biotic world, Earth had taken its first — and hardest — step.&nbsp;What were these first organic molecules? The simplest way to find out would be by checking out current-day hydrothermal vents, such as the at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. But it's not that simple. Aside from the vastly different atmosphere and rock compositions, today’s seafloor is also home to modern life such as bacteria, . Instead, White and her team at JPL had to build their own reactor, the first experimental attempt to capture all the key conditions in early Earth’s seafloor. This reactor accommodates hydrostatic pressures of 100 bar (100 times atmospheric pressure) and temperatures above 100 degrees Celsius.&nbsp;This reactor was first designed in 2003 by White’s then-graduate advisor , an early proponent of the hydrothermal vent theory and the lead scientist of this study. According to Russell, the team used leftover parts from thea European Space Agency mission that observes cosmic microwave radiation, to assemble the reactor. After safety inspections (the reactor was to operate at high pressures and temperatures, and hydrogen is potentially explosive), the authors’ busy schedules (White is also involved in the which will launch this summer), and a that came within 100 feet of the research buildings, forcing the reactor to be shut down, the scientists began their first experiments in 2007. They finished their project more than a decade later, in 2019.&nbsp;The researchers measured irrefutable quantities of formate, the simplest organic molecule obtainable from CO2. Methane was also observed but only sporadically. Currently, there is some ambivalence on where the methane comes from. The researchers in this study think that it could be leaching from the minerals in the reactor. , a professor of evolutionary biochemistry at University College London who was not involved in the study, thinks that the methane may come from the hydrogenation of CO2 itself.&nbsp;“If so, then serpentinization really does form methane directly,” says Lane. But he is surprised that the researchers aren’t seeing much else, such as more complicated organic molecules. It's possible the pressure and temperature conditions aren’t at the levels that the reactor would need to pump out those more complex products. Or it might be there are other necessary factors – perhaps during Hadean Earth, the pH gradients within the vents themselves were the main drivers of organic matter production instead of serpentinization in the seafloor.&nbsp;“It’s really hard. It’s the biggest question”“This is a proof of principle that organics really do form by serpentinization, but it’s a thin soup on offer – much more had to happen in the vents themselves,” says Lane.&nbsp;These simple organic molecules are a far cry from the complex bio-molecules in our bodies today, but it’s a promising start. More importantly, the results demonstrate that these initial chemical reactions are possible under the harsh conditions of a high temperature, high pressure deep-sea environment on a hellish world.&nbsp;"We are still a long way from demonstrating that life could have formed in these environments,” said White in a . “But if anyone ever wants to make that case, I think we'll need to have demonstrated the feasibility of every step of the process; we can't take anything for granted."Russell echoes this sentiment. Life on Earth seems miraculous and complicated enough; studying how life emerged billions of years ago from an abiotic landscape is extremely difficult.&nbsp;“It’s really hard. It’s the biggest question,” says Russell.If life was kickstarted by Earth’s geological processes, that means life in general may not be a freak accident but perhaps an inevitable outcome, especially on worlds with a similar geology. Mars, , and are promising candidates for extraterrestrial life — extinct or not — because they may have (or had) one thing in common: occurring where liquid water meets rock.&nbsp;Mars’ atmosphere contains methane, for which scientists speculate that is the culprit. The ocean on Jupiter’s moon Europa is buried underneath kilometers-thick ice; scientists have found signs of oceanic geology at play in the form of crisscrossing Europa’s icy surface. Hydrothermal activity is most strongly suspected on Enceladus, one of Saturn’s . In , the erupting from Enceladus’ subsurface ocean, suggesting that the ocean is out of chemical equilibrium and hence fertile for life.&nbsp;Space agencies are spacecrafts to hunt for biosignatures on those worlds, but their efforts will take several years. For now, lab-built reactors will have to do to satisfy our curiosity about the origin of life, and one of them is already raising new questions faster than we can answer them.We ask other scientists from our to respond to articles with commentary from their expert perspective.Really interesting article. I’m incredibly impressed with the &nbsp;determination of the scientists behind the research considering all the obstacles they encountered! I’ve always found the sea floor quite fascinating, and it’s intriguing to think about it as the potential origin of life on Earth. Is there any word on how this research will continue while we wait for spacecrafts to arrive on other worlds?&nbsp;So far, the next step is to explore the effect of transition metals such as nickel for catalysis in the hydrothermal reactor. But schedule-wise, the authors have hinted that they are pretty occupied. The lead author Lauren White is still working on the Perseverance mission which will &nbsp;launch later this year. The reactor’s original designer Mike Russell actually just retired, and he laments that he wishes he could keep working on the reactor project.&nbsp;The creation of the first organic molecules is one of the more mysterious parts of “the origins of life.” On one hand, the scientists were able to produce a simple organic compound, which is compelling. This is a notable first step that, I think, will open doors for further experiments to learn more about the natural transition from inorganic to organic–and eventually to life. On the other, an experimental tank still has fundamental differences to natural hydrothermal vents – some are touched upon in this article, like CO2 content, rock type, and pressure. Given that the study did not produce complex organics, it would be interesting to also consider &nbsp;alternate gas compositions likely coming from earth’s interior at the time as well as other variants, like pH as mentioned and rate of gas expulsion. The experiment is also necessarily a closed system, so that may be a factor in limiting the development of more complex organic compounds, which raises the question of what reactions besides &nbsp;serpentinization may be at play, particularly on other planetary bodies with differing conditions than both the Hadean or present-day Earth.&nbsp;This was an interesting and complex article to read. It is always fascinating to me how scientists are so eager to recreate the same primary environmental conditions in the lab to know what exactly happened in the beginning of the life. Apart from complex organic molecular compositions, certainly temperature would have played an essential role to support life.&nbsp;It’s wild that it look almost 15 years to finally get this experiment up and running. I’m curious, did they only look at CO2/methane, or did they also consider nitrogen cycling? I’m not familiar with the composition of typical hydrothermal communities, but I imagine the nitrogen cycle down there would be key to constrain as well.&nbsp;By comparing the chemical composition of modern microbial communities to their ancient counterparts, researchers can find better evidence of the earliest life on land. 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One theory for how life emerged suggests that it originated in the sea, at . It's impossible to observe life-in-the-making in hydrothermal vents nowadays, though, as the seabed in the billions of years since. Instead, researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have recreated early Earth’s deep-sea conditions in their lab to experimentally verify this theory.&nbsp;, led by Lauren White, has built a reactor that mimics early Earth’s geological processes at the bottom of the ocean. By mixing CO2 and hydrogen-rich fluids — proxies for and alkaline hydrothermal spew — across a...

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Scientists recreated ancient Earth's ocean hell to figure out how life began

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