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EARLY EARTH
Discovery demystifies origin of life phenomenon
by Staff Writers
Akron, OH (SPX) Mar 12, 2015


Dr. Tianbo Liu.

The origin of life is still a mystery with many unsolved puzzles. How were molecules created? How did they assemble into large structures? Among the conundrums, the "homochirality" phenomenon upon which amino acids and sugars form is particularly fascinating. University of Akron A. Schulman Professor of Polymer Science Tianbo Liu has discovered that Mother Nature's clear bias toward certain amino acids and sugars and against others isn't accidental.

Liu explains that all life molecules are paired as left-handed and right-handed structures. In scientific terms, the phenomenon is called chirality. Nature's selection of only right-handed sugars and left-handed amino acids upon which to build life might be much simpler than we expected before.

Liu found that any molecules, if large enough (several nanometers) and with an electrical charge, will seek their own type with which to form large assemblies. This "self-recognition" of left-handed and right-handed molecule pairs is featured in the March 10, 2015 issue of Nature Communications .

"We show that homochirality, or the manner in which molecules select other like molecules to form larger assemblies, may not be as mysterious as we imagined," Liu says.

While an understanding of how homochirality occured at the onset of life remains a mystery, this new finding emphasizes that Mother Nature's inner workings may not be as complex as we think.


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EARLY EARTH
Getting to the origins of photosynthesis
Oxford UK (SPX) Mar 12, 2015
One of the most important areas in all of biology is the evolution of photosynthesis. Some species of single celled cyanobacteria, through photosynthesis, forever changed the atmosphere of the early Earth by filling it with oxygen, allowing a huge expansion in terms of what life was possible on the planet. Cardona et al., in the advanced online edition of Molecular Biology and Evolution, e ... read more


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