This Echo is READ ONLY !   NO Un-Authorized Messages Please!
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Press and Public Relations Office
The Royal Society
London, U.K.

Contact:
Soccy Ponsford
Press and PR Office
The Royal Society
Tel: 020 7451 2508
email: socorro.ponsford{at}royalsoc.ac.uk

4 December 2002

Revolutionary new theory for origins of life on earth
=====================================================

A totally new and highly controversial theory on the origin of life on 
earth, is set to cause a storm in the science world and has 
implications for the existence of life on other planets. Research[*] 
by Professor William Martin of the University of Dusseldorf and Dr 
Michael Russell of the Scottish Environmental Research Centre in 
Glasgow, claims that living systems originated from inorganic 
incubators -- small compartments in iron sulphide rocks. The new 
theory radically departs from existing perceptions of how life
developed and it will be published in Philosophical Transactions 
series B, a learned journal produced by the Royal Society.

Since the 1930s the accepted theories for the origins of cells and 
therefore the origin of life, claim that chemical reactions in the 
earth's most ancient atmosphere produced the building blocks of life 
-- in essence -- life first, cells second and the atmosphere playing a 
role.

Professor Martin and Dr Russell have long had problems with the 
existing hypotheses of cell evolution and their theory turns 
traditional views upside down. They claim that cells came first. The 
first cells were not living cells but inorganic ones made of iron 
sulphide and were formed not at the earth's surface but in total 
darkness at the bottom of the oceans. Life, they say, is a chemical 
consequence of convection currents through the earth's crust and in
principle, this could happen on any wet, rocky planet.

Dr Russell says: "As hydrothermal fluid -- rich in compounds such as 
hydrogen, cyanide, sulphides and carbon monoxide -- emerged from the 
earth's crust at the ocean floor, it reacted inside the tiny metal 
sulphide cavities. They provided the right microenvironment for 
chemical reactions to take place. That kept the building blocks of 
life concentrated at the site where they were formed rather than
diffusing away into the ocean. The iron sulphide cells, we argue, is 
where life began."

One of the implications of Martin and Russell's theory is that life on 
other planets or some large moons in our own solar system, might be 
much more likely than previously assumed.

The research by Professor Martin and Dr Russell is backed up by 
another paper "The redox protein construction kit:  pre-last universal 
common+ ancestor evolution of energy- conserving enzymes" by F. 
Baymann, E. Lebrun, M. Brugna, B. Schoepp-Cothenet, M.-T. 
Giudici-Orticoni & W. Nitschke which will be published in the same 
edition.

[*] "On the origins of cells: a hypothesis for the evolutionary 
transitions from abiotic geochemistry to chemoautotrophic prokaryotes, 
and from prokaryotes to nucleated cells", by Professor William Martin, 
Institut fuer Botanik III, University of Dusseldorf and Dr Michael
Russell, Scottish Environmental Research Centre, Glasgow.

     http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk

For further information, PDF file, and media password to
access files direct, please contact:

Elaine Calvert
0776 461 4113/+44 (0) 7241 6227
email: elaine.calvert{at}lineone.net

To read more about this forthcoming issue,
   http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/phil_bio/news/genomics.html

 - End of File -
================

---