Did Life Originate from Clay -Science Fiction or Reality?

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.

Szostak's focus on clay as a catalyst of life reminded us at the Daily Galaxy of one of the great early Flash Gordon science fiction classic Mars Attacks the World (1938), a feature-length  film starring Buster Crabbe, as Flash Gortdon his lady love Dale Arden, and scientific genius Dr. Zarkov. The daring threesome blast off for Mars, where a mysterious force is sucking the nitrogen from the Earth's atmosphre. They hope to determine the source of this power and destroy it. The villain behind the Earth-threatening scheme is none other than "Ming the Merciless," who also foments a deadly feud between Prince Barin of the planet Mongo and the Clay People of  Mars. Ming hopes that this battle will allow him to conquer the universe in the confusion. But the Clay People ultimately align with Barin and Flash Gordon, and Ming is defeated.

Clay people of Mars! So, did life originally spring from clay as some earth-bound creation myths assert? 

Not necessarily, but it does provide a possible mechanism for explaining how life initially arose from nonliving molecules. Szostak's team at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital showed that the presence of clay aids naturally occurring reactions that result in the formation of fatty sacks called vesicles, similar to what scientists expect the first living cells to have looked like. Further, the clay helps RNA form. The RNA can stick to the clay and move with it into the vesicles. This provides a method for RNA's critical genetic information to move inside a primitive cell.

"It's exciting because we know that a particular clay mineral helps with the assembly of RNA," Szostak said. "There certainly would have been lots of environments on early Earth with clay minerals. It's something that forms relatively easily as rocks weather."

The researchers also found that the clay expedited the process by which fatty acids form vesicles that could serve as cell membranes. When RNA and fatty acids were mixed with the montmorillonite, the clay seemed to help transport the RNA inside the vesicles, forming a cell-like structure. Szostak and his team surmised that a similar process could possibly have led to the creation of the first cell.

Posted by Casey Kazan.

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