An intriguing research article recently appeared in PNAS. Titled 'Aqueous microdroplets enable abiotic synthesis and chain extension of unique peptide isomers from free amino acids,' the article considers the chemical building blocks of life. The Purdue University team behind the paper uncovered previously unknown mechanics related to peptide-forming reactions in water. Their findings are exciting because they shed light on how life may have evolved.
Here's a quote from a SciTech Daily article about it:
"Scientists have theorized for decades that life on Earth began in the oceans. However, the chemistry behind this remained an enigma. Raw amino acids - something that meteorites delivered to early Earth daily - can react and latch together to form peptides. These are the building blocks of proteins and, eventually, life. Strangely, the process requires the loss of a water molecule, which seems exceedingly improbable in a wet, aqueous, or oceanic environment. For life to form, it required water. However, it also needed space away from the water. [Graham] Cooks, an expert in mass spectrometry and early Earth chemistry, and his research team have uncovered the answer to the riddle: “Water isn’t wet everywhere.” On the margins, where the water droplet meets the atmosphere, extremely quick reactions can take place, transforming abiotic amino acids into the building blocks of life. Therefore, fertile landscapes for life’s potential evolution were in places where sea spray flies into the air and waves pound the land, or where fresh water burbles down a slope. ... The rates of reactions in droplets are anywhere from a hundred to a million times faster than the same chemicals reacting in bulk solution."
While I'm obviously not an evolutionary biologist, I can appreciate that these findings imply a whole new field of droplet chemistry. And I love that stardust mingled with finely divided water on Earth to produce life. The chemical reactions underneath biology didn't happen in still pools of undisturbed water, but in sprays on the edges of rushing rivers and crashing waves. Essentially, we're made of stuff from space and waterfalls.
Every gardener knows that life is in the edges. The latest research confirms and expands upon this anecdotal truth. Consider how the social might reflect the biological. In society, magic is rarely in the center and often at the edges. For a variety of reasons, the best art and music arises in the fringe.
In the world of ideas, too, the edges are important. Many great thinkers have been outliers in some way. Of course, the fringe also produces flat Earthers and all kinds of other nonsense. But the mere presence of such nonsense signals that an environment is outside the normative mainstream, which creates space for unconventional ideas that are also amazing.
Stretching the metaphor to the limits of credulity, some of life's most valuable moments come not from the still ocean of routine, but from the turbulence of the unexpected. This is true of action, but also of thinking. If you're always thinking about the same stuff in the same way, little new is likely to come of it. But sometimes, right on the edge of old patterns, a new thing suddenly emerges, ready to test the limits of what is possible.
(Feature image from Pixabay.)
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