SIMULATING LIFE'S ORIGINS: WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM IN NATURO EXPERIMENTS?

Much of the progress in origins of life research depends on laboratory simulations, beginning with Stanley Miller’s simulation of the prebiotic atmosphere. A tacit assumption in all such simulations is that similar reactions could plausibly occur in the prebiotic environment. However, few if any of the simulations have been tested in the actual environment it is meant to simulate, and attempts to carry out such experiments are potentially very revealing. I have surveyed volcanic sites in Kamchatka, Iceland, Hawaii and northern California, with the specific purpose of observing their properties in the context of prebiotic simulations. It is a reasonable assumption that such sites provide useful analogue environments that can serve as models of the prebiotic Earth. The parameters to be considered include pH ranges, volcanic gas composition, di- and trivalent cations, temperature, porosity, and agitation. I will discuss the effects of these parameters on stability of self-assembled membranes, permeability, hydrolysis rates of peptides and polymers, osmotic stress, and adsorption to mineral surfaces.