BSC 120 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Murchison Meteorite, Francesco Redi, Radiometric Dating

• School: University of Alabama
• Department: Biological Sciences
• Course: BSC 120
• Professor: Martha Powell

Document Summary

Belief in spontaneous generation of life i: correlation is not causation, disproved this with flies/maggots and meat in jars with various coverings, louis pasteur (1862), evidence against contemporary spontaneous generation i. Bacteria only appeared as close as they could get: 3 scenarios for the origin of life, scenario 1: according to one hypothesis, the first organisms were products of chemical evolution in four stages i. Stage 2: abiotic synthesis of polymers: drip solutions of monomers onto clay, rock, or hot sand, polynucleotides copy themselves using base pairing iii. Stage 3: formation of protocells: could have formed spontaneously, have selective permeability iv. Stage 4: origin of self-replicating molecules: first genes were short strands of dna that could copy themselves w/o proteins; perhaps used ribozymes, scenario 2: deep sea alkaline vents/volcanoes i. ii. Sulfur + ion used to make atp: scenario 3: panspermia-cosmic ancestry.