1. Origins

2. Abiogenesis
Origin of life from non-living components.

3. Louis Pasteur and the death of Spontaneous Generation
France
Experiment in 1864

4. Darwin’s speculation
Febr 1st My dear Hooker I return the pamphlets, which I have been very glad to read.— It will be a curious discovery if Mr. Lowne’s observation that boiling does not kill certain moulds is proved true; but then how on earth is the absence of all living things in Pasteur’s experiment to be accounted for? I am always delighted to see a word in favour of Pangenesis, which some day, I believe, will have a resurrection. Mr Dyers paper strikes me as a very able Spencerian production. It is often said that all the conditions for the first production of a living organism are now present, which could ever have been present.— But if (& oh what a big if) we could conceive in some warm little pond with all sorts of ammonia & phosphoric salts,—light, heat, electricity &c present, that a protein compound was chemically formed, ready to undergo still more complex changes, at the present day such matter wd be instantly devoured, or absorbed, which would not have been the case before living creatures were formed.— Henrietta makes hardly any progress, & God knows when she will be well. I enjoyed much the visit of you four Gentlemen, ie after the Saturday night, when I thought I was quite done for. Yours affecy | C. Darwin

5. Alexander Ivanovich Oparin
The Origin of Life (1924)
Life and nonlife not very different chemically and physically
Necessary chemical components from early reducing atmosphere
; Russia

6. J. B. S. Haldane The Origin of Life (1929)
Early abiogenesis came about by solar energy together with carbon dioxide, ammonia, and water allowing the combination of organic molecules leading to life
, UK and India

7. Organic molecules are easily destroyed in oxidizing environments.
Because most molecules of life are biopolymers, how were the units made and then organized into chains? e.g. amino acids into proteins, sugars into carbohydrates, nucleotides into nucleic acids, and fatty acids into lipids
At what point did chemical evolution become biological evolution?

8. Urey and Miller Stanley Lloyd Miller Chemistry 1930-2007, USA
Harold Clayton Urey
Physical Chemistry
, USA

9. Urey-Miller Experiment and test of the Haldane-Oparin Hypothesis, 1953

10. Sidney Walter Fox and Proteinoid Spheres
, USA
biochemist

11. Age of the Earth and Traces of Early Life
Earth-Moon system formed BYA
Period of Great Bombardment ends 4.0 BYA
Evidence of a liquid ocean soon after
First evidence of life 3.7 BYA
Stromatolite from Glacier National Park; 3.5 BYA

12. Atmosphere of early earth based on similar planets
Mainly carbon dioxide and nitrogen
Little or no methane or ammonia

13. Other sources of organics
Could have been major source of water and organic matter on the planet

14. How did organics interact to form cells?
The primordial soup would have been too thin for reactions to occur.

15. alternatives: On clay particles Under ice
Wet-dry mud of a shallow ephemeral pond.

16. Black Smokers

17. White Smokers Cooler than black smokers
Tubes in white smoker chimneys approximately same size as a cell
Organics present in the smoker

18. Gunter Wachtershauser
Iron-Sulfur world provided an inorganic form of metabolism
1938-
German Chemist

19. RNA World Proposed by Francis Crick and others
Experimental work by Cech on enzymatic activity of RNA molecules 1982-
Attractive because one molecule can be an enzyme and information storage molecule
1947-
US Chemist

20. Panspermia
Occur in space feeding and moved by radiation pressure from stars
Comets as sources and delivery mechanisms
Life-carrying material ejected from near-by planets on which life has already evolved (e.g. ALH 84001)

21. LUCA
Once established, life quickly sequestered energy compounds and food molecules
Wiped out all other incipient forms of life
All living things today had a last universal common ancestor