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22 Apr 2022 21:00

The Primordial Soap

news from Weizmann Institute of Science

The Primordial Soap

Weizmann Institute scientists disclose comprehensive evidence that life may have originated with lipid nano-scale particles

The answers to life’s greatest questions – the when, what and how of its origins – have yet to be fully resolved. Currently, the leading hypothesis within the scientific community is that life developed from RNA molecules, known for their self-replication ability. Yet for the past two decades, Prof. Doron Lancet, of the Weizmann Institute of Science’s Molecular Genetics Department and ECLT Science Board member, has been swimming against the currents of the primordial soup.
“It is highly improbable that the origin of life traces back to a single complex molecule such as RNA,” says Lancet, “but more likely to assemblies of simple chemical compounds that can form spontaneously and reproduce as a whole.”

To demonstrate the feasibility of this alternative timeline, Lancet has developed a computational chemistry model that has so far been considered to be a theory in search of experimental support. In their recently published papers, Lancet and research students Amit Kahana and Svetlana Maslov present, for the first time, a convincing compendium of experimental data that substantiates their origin of life model.

Read full article from Weizmann Wonder Wander - Science news and culture

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https://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/chemistry/primordial-soap

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