A Prerequisite for Life

TL;DR

This paper suggests that prebiotic self-assembly likely occurred in saline environments like hydrothermal vents, which could explain the origin of homochirality and biochemical reactions in early life.

Contribution

It proposes that saline environments facilitated the self-assembly and preservation of homochiral biomolecules during abiogenesis.

Findings

Self-assembly occurred in saline environments like hydrothermal vents.

Saline conditions helped preserve homochirality of proteins.

Hydrothermal vents are plausible sites for early biochemical reactions.

Abstract

The complex physicochemical structures and chemical reactions in living organism have some common features: (1) The life processes take place in the cytosol in the cells, which, from a physicochemical point of view is an emulsion of biomolecules in a dilute aqueous suspension. (2) All living systems are homochiral with respect to the units of amino acids and carbohydrates, but (some) proteins are chiral unstable in the cytosol. (3) And living organism are mortal. These three common features together give a prerequisite for the prebiotic self-assembly at the start of the Abiogenesis. Here we argue , that it all together indicates, that the prebiotic self-assembly of structures and reactions took place in a more saline environment, whereby the homochirality of proteins not only could be obtained, but also preserved. A more saline environment for the prebiotic self-assembly of organic molecules and establishment of biochemical reactions could have been the hydrothermal vents.