Ever since Charles Darwin published his book "On the Origin of Species," scientists have struggled to determine how the complex lifeforms that we see today could originate from a lifeless chemical soup. Now, scientists from the University of Groningen have released a study that examines self-replicating molecules and the mutations that can occur within them, suggesting that ecological diversity may have stemmed from these processes.
"It started with a chance discovery," Sijbren Otto, who headed the research, said in a press release. "We found some small peptides that could arrange themselves into rings, which could then form stacks."
After one stack formed, Otto noticed that it would grow and multiply into two smaller stacks, and this process would keep repeating itself. Subsequently, these stacks would create the rings that make up their composition. These stacks and rings are referred to as "replicators" due to their ability to make copies of themselves.
Otto and his team also noticed that mutations within these replicators could lead to a second set of replicator descendants, creating sets of replicators that would continue to make copies of themselves and mutate, leaving sets of ancestrally related replicators. This is very similar to how new species form from existing ones during the process of evolution, only at the molecular level.
The results show how new "chemical species" can emerge through chemical evolution and may be one of the processes that stimulated life during the Earth's earliest years.
"Of course, the term speciation should only be used when referring to sexually reproducing organisms, but our work shows much the same patterns," Otto said. "We start with no replicators, but see first one type emerge and then after a while, another. That is certainly most significant!"
The findings were published in the Jan. 4 issue of Nature Chemistry.
