Water Droplets Hold the Secret Ingredient for Building Life Chemists uncover key to early Earth chemistry, which could unlock paths to speed up chemical synthesis for drug discovery. Purdue University chemists have discovered a mechanism for peptide-forming reactions to occur in water — somethin
Chemists discover a mechanism for peptide-forming reactions to occur in water, which leads to proteins and so to life on Earth. It could also lead to the faster development of drugs to treat humanity’s most debilitating diseases.Chemists uncover key to early Earth chemistry, which could unlock paths to speed up chemical synthesis for drug discovery.
“This is essentially the chemistry behind the origin of life,” said Graham Cooks. He is the Henry Bohn Hass Distinguished Professor of Analytical Chemistry in Purdue’s College of Science. “This is the first demonstration that primordial molecules, simple, spontaneously form peptides, the building blocks of life, in droplets of pure water. This is a dramatic discovery.
“This is the first demonstration that primordial molecules, simple amino acids, spontaneously form peptides, the building blocks of life, in droplets of pure water. This is a dramatic discovery.” —The chemists have been using mass spectrometers to examine chemical reactions in droplets containing water for more than 10 years.
The swift rates of these reactions make catalysts unnecessary, speeding up the reactions and, in the case of early Earth chemistry, making the evolution of life possible. Decades of scientific investigation have been focused on figuring out how this mechanism works. The secret of how life emerged on Earth can help scientists better understand why it happened and guide their search for life on other planets, or even moons.
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