Thermal Synthesis Experiment
Scientist: Sidney Walter Fox
● Fox uses intense heat as the driving mechanism in his model.
● In the laboratory demonstration of Fox’s origin of life scheme, a particular mixture of pure, dry
amino acids are heated at about 175 degree celcius (water boils at 100 degree celcius) for a
limited time (usually about six hours)
● Intense heating is then ceased, and the production is stirred with hot water, and insoluble
material is removed by filtration.
● When the aqueous solution cools, a product precipitates in the form of microscopic globules,
which fox calls proteinoid microspheres. Analysis of this material shows that it consists of
polymers, or chains, of amino acids, although of shorter lengths than are usually found in
proteins.
Proteinoid microspheres
● Some of these globules resemble coccoid bacteria, and others bulge and superficially appear
to be budding similar to certain microorganisms.
Coccoid bacteria
Explanation: Fox claims that his proteinoid microspheres constitute protocells (that is, they are
almost, but not quite, true cells), and were a vital link between the primordial chemical environment
and true living cells. He claims that the amino acids in these polymers are not randomly arranged as
would be expected, but that a few highly homogeneous (having identical chemical structure)
protein-like molecules are obtained with their amino acids arranged in a precisely ordered
sequence. He further claims that these compounds possess detectable catalytic or enzyme-like
properties. Finally, Fox claims that these microspheres multiply by division somewhat in the manner
of true cells.
Hydrothermal Vents
Billions of years ago, the young planet had widespread volcanic activity and an atmosphere that
created hostile conditions.
Necessities for any life form:
Hydrogen, methane, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, phosphates, and ammonia.
Note:
In order for these ingredients to comingle and react with each other, they need a liquid solvent:
water. And inorder to grow and reproduce, all life needs a source of energy.
Locations:
Places on land or close to the surface of the ocean have the advantage of access to sunlight. But at
the time when life began, the UV radiation on Earth’s surface was likely to harsh for life to survive
there. One setting offers protection from this radiation, and an alternative energy source: the
hydrothermal vents that wind across the ocean floor.
Hydrothermal Vents:
Is a fissure in the Earth’s crust where seawater seeps into magma chambers and is ejected back out
at high temperatures, along with a rich slurry of minerals (iron, barium, calcium, silicon) and simple
chemical compounds (H2O, CO2, CH4). Energy is particulary concentrated at the steep chemical
gradients of hydrothermal vents.
LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor)
There are two kinds of hydrothermal vents:
Black smokers - release acidic, carbon-dioxide-rixh water, heated to hundres of degrees Celsius
and packed with sulphur, iron, copper and other metals essential to life.
White smokers- alkali, CH4, Ca
Among the white smokers, a field of hydrothermal vents on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge called Lost City
has become the most favored candidate for the cradle of life. The seawater expelled here is highly
allaline and lacks carbon dioxide, but is rich in methane and offers more hospitable temperatures.
Adjacent black smokers may have contributed the carbon dioxide necessary for life to evolve at Lost
City, giving it all the components to support the first organisms that radiated into the incredible
diversity of life on Earth today.
● Cold seawater enters and perculates down through the crust where it becomes superheated
and takes up minerals from the surrounding rocks.
● This mineral rich fluid jets back into the ovean at extremely high velocities, and temperatures
exceeding 400 degree Celsius.
● As the fluids mix with cold seawater, the dissolved minerals precipitaye out in smoke-like
billows, and build towering chimney structures on the seafloor.
