Expert Reveals Basalt Rocks Played a Role in Early Life

KOMPAS.com – Life appears and happens so fast. Fossils show microbes existed 3.7 billion years ago, just a few hundred million years after the planet cooled enough to support biochemistry.

Many researchers think that the hereditary material for the first organisms was RNAwhich although not as complex as DNA, RNA would still be difficult to forge into the long strands needed to convey genetic information.

This raises the question of how RNA formed spontaneously.

Through research conducted in the laboratory, it can be seen that basalt rock helps individual RNAs known as nucleoside triphosphates, link into strands of up to 200 letters.

Read also: Scientists Reveal the Role of RNA and DNA in Forming Early Life on Earth

These stones would abound in fire and brimstone on the newly formed earth. Basalt is an aphanitic extrusive igneous rock formed by the rapid cooling of low-viscosity lava rich in magnesium and iron.

“This seems to be a beautiful story. It finally explains how nucleoside triphosphates react with each other to give RNA strands,” said Thomas Carell, a chemist at Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich as quoted from Science.org, Monday (6/6/2022).

Origin-of-life researchers love the primordial world of RNA, because the molecule can carry out two different processes essential to life.

Like DNA, RNA consists of four chemical letters that can carry genetic information, and not much different from proteins, RNA can also catalyze chemical reactions needed for life.

However, no one has yet discovered a plausible set of prebiotic conditions that would cause hundreds of RNA letters, each complex molecule, to link together into strands long enough to support the complex chemistry needed to trigger evolution.

A geologist at the University of Colorado Boulder Stephen Mojzsis questions the role of basalt rock, which is rich in metals such as magnesium and iron, in driving many chemical reactions.

“At that time, basaltic rocks were in any part of the earth,” he explained.

Mojzsis sent samples of five different basaltic glasses to Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution.

Then, molecular biologist Elisa Biondi and her team ground each sample into a fine powder, sterilized it, and then mixed it with a solution of nucleoside triphosphate.

Without the presence of rock powder, the RNA letters fail to connect. But when mixed with rock powder, the molecules combine into long strands, some hundreds of letters.

The report, published in Astrobiology, says no heat or light is needed.

“All we have to do is wait,” said Biondi.

Read also: Thanks to Mushrooms, the Driver of Early Life on Earth

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