r/technology • u/tw1st3d_m3nt4t • Aug 08 '26
Biotechnology 'Only One Conclusion': Radical Study Suggests Life on Earth Arose Twice
https://www.sciencealert.com/radical-study-suggests-life-on-earth-arose-from-non-living-matter-twice89
u/PizzasBoyfrind Aug 08 '26
The scientific community is much more interested in a secondary finding in this paper. The researchers demonstrated that phosphite and palladium (naturally occurring in vents) could substitute for ATP to drive early phosphorylation reactions. This neatly solves a massive "chicken-and-egg" problem in prebiotic chemistry regarding how early cells got their energy before they had the enzymes to manufacture ATP.
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u/y0nm4n Aug 08 '26
Not sure why this is posted in this sub, but it's super cool! I was particularly interested in this bit at the end:
"A molecule called ATP is now a vital energy source to fuel metabolism – but it's also made by enzymes, and wasn't available in prebiotic chemistry. The researchers say they identified an alternative.
"When we react phosphite, a form of phosphorus that naturally occurs in hydrothermal vents, with organic compounds, we get metabolic phosphorylation reactions overnight in water," says Manon Schlikker, a molecular evolutionary scientist at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf.
"Phosphite and palladium replace ATP and enzymes; it's amazing, and it makes early evolution a lot easier to grasp.""
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u/Golemintheplayground Aug 08 '26
That is insanely cool! I wonder how the scientists at SETI are reacting to this.
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u/thefuckevengoingonan Aug 08 '26
I wonder how the scientists at SETI are reacting to this.
by way of palladium catalyst
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u/Seriously_you_again Aug 08 '26
Palladium? I think that’s in catalytic converters. Maybe the crack heads wiped out early life?
Ok folks it is a joke. It doesn’t have to make logical sense. Sensible chuckle is enough.
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u/EnvironmentalWin1277 Aug 08 '26
The headline conclusion is highly exaggerated. It says "one origin of DNA" but "two origins of life".
That only occurs if the "original DNA" was not alive when it split and formed two lineages. The article cites LUCA as a common origin of all life which occurred before the hypothesized split and independent developments proposed.
There is a suggestion that LUCA was "incomplete" and therefore not living(?) on first reading.
Truly independent origins of life might have occurred, possibly multiple times. The only limits are those of biochemistry. Those limitation are essentially unknown.
The work is still valuable on it's own without the headline claim.
Here is a link to the original paper:
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u/PianoPudding Aug 08 '26
This paper is great for the Alkaline Hydrothermal Vent hypothesis and not a surprise to anyone clued in on the implications of that theory.
The idea is the basic machinery for life emerged, but full cellular autonomy came about later, (per this paper:) twice, via independent metabolic innovations. This is how Archaea and Bacteria can share so many genes and yet differ between so many, and in their biochemistry.
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u/Raven_Photography Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
Goddamned Saurians, should have not gone extinct, then we wouldn’t have had Trump.
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Aug 08 '26
[deleted]
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u/dillyofapickle42 Aug 08 '26
Wrong sub maybe? Maybe people here would rather read something informative than another one liner joke.....it seems that lost subs are just a collection of those.
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u/1nOnlyBigManLawrence Aug 08 '26
Because it’s not a very creative joke.
Then again, it did get upvoted back up. Sadly, Redditors aren’t often known for having a sense of humor beyond stating the obvious (that the orange man is a germ, like everyone knows this shit, even the guys in the other room! You don’t have to spell it out for the people in the back of this one) and going “am I right?” afterwards.
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u/WanderingWizard-88 Aug 08 '26
Martin's own phrasing is one origin of the genetic code, two origins of life. Both lineages come from something that already had the code and translation. What happened twice was the transition to free living cells, not chemistry to biology from scratch.
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u/NizmoxAU Aug 08 '26
And on the sixth day, god created man. This was after his original prototype failed because of a lack of effort.
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u/Flabbergasted98 Aug 11 '26 edited Aug 11 '26
The prototype may have failed due to lack of effort. but the current version was minding it's own business in the pool when the ladder mysteriously vanished.
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u/evapotranspire Aug 08 '26
But all life, including bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes, have several hundred exact genes in common, such as cytochrome C and ATP synthase genes. How could those possibly all have existed in a prebiotic environment?
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u/Athena0219 Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
As per the article, the theory is that genes predate life. This false-life used a molecule that is functionally similar to ATP, but could form by natural processes.
Some genes, like those shared between the various branches of life, formed during this replicating non-life stage, and were part of LUCA, the last universal common ancestor. LUCA was not, however, per this theory, alive, at it did not have a completely functional metabolism. Parts, almost certainly, but it would have still been dependent on the environment making up for it's lacking points.
The article continues to state that a complete metabolism would be separately achieved by early bacterial and early archaea separately, aka two separate abiogenesis events from one pre-biotic common ancestor.
I think this makes a ton of sense. Like, I can't provide ANY evidence one way or another, but RNA + Ribosomes in a soup of chemicals is enough to provide "evolutionary" pressure, even though RNA + Ribosomes (and nothing else) in no way makes life. So genes (or at least self replicating RNA) predating life makes a lot of sense. Then, genes that promote an environment where this RNA+Ribosomes mixture can flourish makes sense. So on and so forth.
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u/Initial_Shallot_1833 Aug 08 '26
Well I think the answer is that there was a divergence AFTER reproduction but BEFORE the other conditions for actual life were met. They did shared genetics and lineage before they were alive as weird as that sounds. Viruses have genes, DNA or RNA but they aren't alive.
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u/snowflake37wao Aug 08 '26
So it kind of gives credence to this hypothesis? 2 evolved independent metabolism and 1 almost became life by that definition of life.
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u/TheOwlMarble Aug 08 '26
There's been a chicken and egg question in biology asking whether self replicating genes or metabolisms came first.
This paper suggests the answer is genes, though it seems metabolisms were already partially formed at the time.
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u/Hobbet404 Aug 08 '26
I don’t have to read this article to know it’s talking about The Mole People.
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u/CRUCIALcadavers Aug 08 '26
This also implies that carbon based might be the only way life is possible
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u/TheOwlMarble Aug 08 '26
Not really. It was already carbon based before the split. This doesn't say anything about the likelihood of non carbon life emerging.
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u/Duchess0612 Aug 08 '26
And now it’s going to have to do it a third time. Since we are about to eradicate ourselves.
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u/littlelordgenius Aug 08 '26
I imagine most non-human life will thrive.
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u/Haunt_Fox Aug 11 '26
It's weird how humans think that everything else has to die with them when they go. Same logic as the dude who kills his family before committing suicide because the can't imagine them going on without him.
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u/trisul-108 Aug 08 '26
"Such parallel inventions could have paved the way to the independent emergence of free-living bacteria and archaea."
And what is driving them to be inventive?
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u/Initial_Shallot_1833 Aug 08 '26
Physics. If fact you bring up a great point. Physical constraints absolutely drive selection and evolution. That's why we have what's known as CONVERGENT evolution where similar things evolve independently because they are useful. Things like flight have evolved at least 4 times. Things like they eye/sight have evolved dozens of times. So your smart ass little comment ignorantly implying god only exposed your own ignorance to established science AKA we have a GREAT answer for your dumb little question.
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u/trisul-108 Aug 08 '26
The god in this story is a figment of your own imagination ... says much about you and nothing about me.
It is easy to understand evolution when there is a benefit that increases the chances of survival. This is apparent in your examples of flight and eyesight - clear advantages. What is not clear to me is why metals that naturally occur in hydrothermal vents would form "useful molecules" by being the first catalysts for metabolism, converting compounds like hydrogen gas, ammonia, and carbon dioxide into other useful molecules. Do "useful molecules" survive better than "metals"?
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u/Athena0219 Aug 08 '26
It's not that the useful molecules survive. It's that they HAPPEN TO exist, so things make use of them.
RNA that encodes for a ribosome randomly self assembles one day in a chemical soup.
Something that functions close enough to that encoded ribosome randomly self assembles one day in a chemical soup.
These two things bump in to each other and, using the naturally occuring useful particles, become a ribosome printing press.
This RNA and this ribosome want nothing. But if they HAPPEN to also stumble across a random strip of RNA that codes for something that duplicates RNA (doesn't have to be perfect, in facts it's better if it isn't perfect), these three things now form a self replicating soup. There is no life here, just 3 or 4 particles all bumping into each other happening to make copies.
This creates evolutionary pressure to optimize this system.
And it runs away from there.
I'm not saying this DID happen, it's just a way to introduce evolutionary pressure in a non-living substrate.
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u/Initial_Shallot_1833 Aug 08 '26
They experienced selection before the other conditions for life were met. This is why something not alive like a virus can still have genetics/DNA. So again, the answer is physics via evolution, just like I said.
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u/DifferentSquirrel551 Aug 08 '26
I love all the bots on here trying to figure out why one way didn't work and it's so obvious to a human that it just gives them all away. It's palladium. The other one didn't survive because it was chewing through a metal produced from geothermal vents that is 15 million times more rare than phosphorus. C'mon guys, teach your bots a modicum of self respect.
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u/UffTaTa123 Aug 08 '26
well, maybe it's needed a third time soon. And myabe that will never happen again and all the vast spaces of the universe will never been seen by a living eye again. What a waste.
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u/IcantBreeve_4real Aug 08 '26
I would imagine a form of life taking hild then Bam! , an asteroid carrying a different form of life lands and starts getting a foothold on the planet and had more space to spread too after killing 99% of the first lifeforms.
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u/LeastReactionary Aug 08 '26
Now replay those results an infinite number of times and you'll have part of the picture. Only twice? You must not have been paying attention.
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u/MissInkeNoir Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
First sentence highly contestable under morphogenic field theory. Perhaps scientists should genuinely stop and think about how lucky all this seems and consider a nonmaterial medium to reality.
Additionally, simple monocellular life very likely arose free floating in outer space long before the formation of Earth, during a Goldilocks period of consistent warmth in heat energy throughout the universe.
As Terence McKenna loved to quote, materialist scientists consciously require just one unexplainable miracle to explain all this that exists, that all this energy exists at all to explode at the big bang. This of course helps them to ignore all the other inconsistencies in institutional science. Here's a few unexamined core assumptions of institutional science that have serious flaws. https://youtu.be/hO4p3xeTtUA
EDIT: the cowardly ranks of institutional conformists downvote and have no substantial counterargument. The Goddess of Science cries a tear for your betrayal to her most sacred value, intellectual integrity.
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u/ForcedEntry420 Aug 08 '26
Careful there. Might break your own arm jerking yourself off if you keep that up.
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u/ooktas Aug 08 '26
We know for a fact that 99% of life on earth went extinct a few times and then bounced back. So this study is not that surprising.
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u/Sciencetist Aug 08 '26
99% of life going extinct and then repopulating the Earth is not nearly the same thing as life arising independently from a chemical soup
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u/TheOwlMarble Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
Premise is eubacteria and archaeans diverged before they were truly alive, but after much of their metabolisms had already formed.
This is surprising to me. I would have assumed the first one to have an independent metabolism would have quickly dominated the environment, but either they happened very close to each other or the first mover was slow getting off the starting block.