Chance and Necessity in the Evolution of Matter to Life: A Comprehensive Hypothesisстатья
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Дата последнего поиска статьи во внешних источниках: 17 ноября 2021 г.
Аннотация:Specialists in several branches of life sciences are trying to solve, piece by piece, theimmensely complex puzzle of the origin of life. Some parts of the puzzle seem to appear with arather high degree of clarity, while others remain totally obscure. We cannot be sure that lifeemerged only on our Earth, but we believe that the presence of large amounts of water in its liquidstate is absolutely essential for the emergence and evolution of living matter. We can also assumethat the latter exploits everywhere the same light elements, mainly C, H, O, N, S, and P, andsomehow manipulates the same simple monomeric and polymeric organic compounds, such asalpha‐amino acids, carbohydrates, nucleic bases, and surface‐active carboxylic acids. The authorcontributes to the field by stating that all fundamental particles of our matter are “homochiral” andpredominantly produce in an absolute asymmetric synthesis amino acids of L‐configuration andcarbohydrates of D‐series. Another important point is that free atmospheric oxygen mainly stemsfrom the photolysis of water molecules by cosmic irradiation and is not necessarily bound to livingorganisms on the planet.