November 11, 2008

Harvard Scientist Asks: Was First Life on Earth Formed by Clay?

In the early 1990s, Jack Szostak of Harvard Medical School began investigating the molecular origins of life in order to understand how chemicals combined to form the first living organisms on primitive Earth. Inspired by Tom Cech and Sidney Altman’s discovery that RNA could catalyze chemical reactions inside cells (which later earned them a Nobel Prize), Szostak began to explore RNA’s ability to catalyze its own reproduction.

Building on earlier work by other scientists, Szostak and colleagues began experimenting with a clay mixture common on early Earth called montmorillonite, which was found to catalyze the chemical reactions needed to make RNA.

So, did life originally spring from clay as some creation myths assert?

Full article here:

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/11/harvard-scienti.html