Cytoplasmic Inheritance in Multicellular Organisms
Part 1 The Beginning of Life on Earth Fossilized remains of microscopic life, date the beginning of life to approximately 3.8 billion years ago (though isotopic analysis of zircons could date life to as far back as 4.4 billion years ago.). Though there seems to be consensus on the when, the how life got its start remains a topic that has yet to have been agreed upon. One of the first models to have been accepted (other than the belief not backed by any scientific evidence that life was created by god), is that life started from a primordial soup of the molecules necessary to form the building blocks of life (Herschy 2014). In this model molecules such as methane, ammonia, hydrogen gas, and water vapor were present in a solution and subjected to an electric shock that catalyzed their reaction to form amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || ).push({}); A newer model, however, says life originated near hydrothermal vents deep in the ocean. These vents emit geothermally heated alkaline water, that when mixes with the oceans acidic seawater (the early oceans are thought to contain very high levels of CO2; making it acidic), provided the energy gradient necessary for the production of organic molecules, and then eventually, self-replicating molecules. Read the full article
