BSCI 10001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Harold Urey, Hydrogen Cyanide, Stanley Miller
28 Apr 2019
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We do know that there was no free o2 in the atmosphere of the early earth, and there was a lot of volcanic activity, with associated lightning. Oparin and haldane further proposed that, under the action of heat and lightning, these molecules would react to produce reduced organic molecules like hydrogen cyanide (hcn) and formaldehyde (h2co). Hcn and h2co would then react to form sugars, amino acids, nucleotides, etc, which would accumulate in the oceans, forming a prebiotic soup . Ultimately biological macromolecules would be formed: proteins, rna, etc. Finally, these molecules would become encased in a membrane, forming the first proto-cells. Later, however, geophysicists concluded that the early atmosphere of the earth would have been dominated by volcanic gases (co2, h2o, n2 ); ie, there would not have been a large amount of reduced molecules like methane and ammonia. & urey experiment with co2, h2o and n2 in the apparatus, amino acids and nucleotides were not formed!
