The Nature of Life on Earth

(Chapter 5)

Dr. Alex Mills

1
Department of Biology
York University
 Searches need a “search image”
• If we’re looking for life in the universe, we’d better have
an idea of what we’re looking for!
• Best model?  life on Earth
• Alien life could be very different (and need not
be “humanoid”), but we can generate a good
idea of what constitutes life by looking at Earth

General Properties of Life

• We use a list (6 / 7 things), but it is of
necessary, but not independently
sufficient, things
• i.e., life’s various attributes can also
represent non-living things, but
collectively they provide us with a
concept of “the living” 5.2
 (a) - Order
• This is true at multiple levels:
– Molecules
– Structures within cells
– Cells
– And, if multicellular, groups of specialized cells
– And then relationships among individual organisms

(b) - Reproduction
• Asexual reproduction is common among
single-celled organisms and is ancestral to
sexual reproduction
• We also expect the counterpart ‘death’ to be a
feature of life
• Viruses (and sexual reproducers!) rely on
others for successful reproduction
5.3
(c) – Growth & Development
• This flows from reproduction:
 new individuals grow and develop based on
incorporation of materials and energy, and
based on heredity

(d) – Energy Utilization

• The foregoing (order, reproduction,
growth and development) all require
energy
• In order to resist the otherwise
inevitability of disorder or entropy
(second law of thermodynamics),
organisms require energy
5.4
(e) – Response to Environment
• Biologists call this “irritability”
• It includes responses to non-living (abiotic) stimuli
like temperature…
• …and also to living (biotic) stimuli, like fleeing a
predator or pursuing a mate

(f) – Evolutionary Adaptation

• Adaptation represents the match
between the features of an
organism and the opportunities and
constraints of its environment
• Adaptation results from evolutionary
processes, particularly
natural selection
5.5
 Evolution is the unifying
foundation of Biology…
• Two main views represented in ancient
philosophy:
– Anaximander – species originated in water and
become increasingly complex over time
– Aristotle – species are independent and
immutable (unchanging)

• Numerous imaginative concepts in the

intervening period
• 1830s: Charles Darwin explored the
World, especially South America and
the Galapagos Islands
• 1859: Charles Darwin published On the
Origin of Species 5.6
 On the Origin of Species (1859)
a. Documented the change in diversity over
with time
b. Proposed a still-accepted mechanism
(natural selection)
c. Did not know about mechanisms of heredity
Gould’s Summary of Natural Selection
• Undeniable Fact 1. All organisms overproduce and compete
for limited resources
• Undeniable Fact 2. There is individual variation among
individuals in populations, and much of this variation is
heritable
• Inescapable Conclusion. Those individuals whose heritable
traits best enable them to survive and reproduce, contribute
more to successive generations (statistically) 5.7
Darwin used Artificial Selection, where humans choose which
individuals will contribute to the next generation, as an analogy
to Natural Selection, where the environment does the choosing.

Note: Individuals
respond to their
environments (like
avoiding certain
temperatures) but
it is Populations
over generations
that respond to
the environment
by evolving

5.8
 Scientific Theories need Evidence
• Darwin--and thousands of others since—have relied on:
– fossils,
– anatomy,
– behaviour,
– DNA, and
– populations that change genetically by natural selection
over short periods
• …as evidence for
evolution and its
major mechanism,
natural selection

5.9
 A simple definition of life
• An entity (organism)
– whose individuals reproduce
– and whose populations evolve through natural selection
• By no means a perfect and all encompassing definition
but likely shared by all forms of life, both terrestrial and
extraterrestrial!

5.10
 The basic ‘unit’ of life is the Cell
• With few exceptions (viruses and poorly-understood
prions), all life exists as cells
• Much life is unicellular (the ancestral state)
• Humans (plants/animals) are multicellular (trillions of cells)
• The cell membrane, which is partly permeable, separates
the cell contents (including DNA) from the rest of the
Universe

5.11
 But what are the
components of cells?
• Mostly water in most cases!
• ~96% O,C,H,N
• There are several classes of key
carbon-based molecules
associated with life

About 20 other elements

in small, but important,
quantities. 5.12
 Carbon – Hydrogen molecules are “organic”
• Why carbon?
– It is a versatile bonder!
• Can bond to 4 other atoms
• Can form single, double, and even
triple bonds
• Capacity therefore to form the basis
of complex 3D molecules
• Carbon bonds are strong enough to
hold together well, but weak enough
to break apart and reform into other
chemicals
H
I
H–C–H
I
H 5.13
 Silicon-based Life?
• In a first-season episode of Star Trek
(original series), Spock and Kirk
encounter a silicon-based life form
• Silicon is like Carbon, and has long
been a favourite of sci-fi writers
• Silicon can also make four bonds BUT:
– It strongly ‘prefers’ oxygen, and not hydrogen
– It doesn’t make double bonds
– It does not exist in a gaseous form (compare carbon dioxide
CO2 (a gas) and silicon dioxide SiO2 (a solid) [i.e., C burns to
a gas, while Si burns to a solid]
• Silicon is far more common on Earth (~1000x) yet life uses
carbon

5.14
 Molecules and Compounds of Life
• A molecule is formed when two or more atoms join
together chemically.
• A compound is a molecule that contains atoms of at
least two different elements.
• The (a) carbon compound building blocks and (b) water
(that life needs) turn out to be very common in the
universe
• Found in asteroids, comets, nebulae, planetary
atmospheres, on and in planets and moons

5.15
 Compounds of Life
• Carbon-containing compounds
1. Carbohydrates
2. Lipids (which includes fats)
3. Proteins (made of amino acids)
4. Nucleic Acids (DNA and RNA)
5. Water  good old H2O

5.16
 1. Carbohydrates
• Simple sugars like glucose (C6H12O6), a
common energy source and energy
storage molecule for organisms
• Also structural compounds like cellulose
(C6H10O5)n ,a major component of wood

2. Lipids
• Fats also store and provide energy
• They’re non-soluble in water, so some lipids
spontaneously gather and form a “bilayer” in
water which is the foundation of the cell
membrane

5.17
 3. Proteins  extremely diverse in function
• These are chains of amino acids (AA)
• There are 20 (out of ~70) AA used by life
• When assembled together in diverse sequences, they
make countless protein types:
a. Many proteins are structural
b. Others are enzymes, facilitating biochemical processes
c. Others are involved in moving things across cell
membranes
d. Still other are cell-to-cell signals

5.18
 Amino Acids (protein building blocks)
An amino
group (NH2)
is attached to
a Carbon A carboxyl
atom group (COOH)
is attached to a
The “R” group Carbon atom
is what varies
• Just as human left and right hands are
mirror images of each other, so it is
with Amino Acids
• This “handedness” is called chirality
• Life on Earth uses the L- arrangement
• But both L- and R- are found in nature
(and in space)
5.19
 4. Nucleic Acids
• DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) and RNA
(ribonucleic acid) are long helical (spiral)
molecules
• DNA:
– Storage of hereditary (i.e. evolutionary)
information
– Instructions for making proteins
(i.e. for growth, development,
maintenance, etc.)
• RNA: helps carry out instructions for making
proteins

5.20
 Tree of Life – largely based on DNA
sequences
• All life on Earth uses DNA and RNA, so presumably any life
elsewhere would use these or some functional equivalent of
them (storage and instructions)
 Millions of species
• Three domains, distinguished by key features of DNA, cell
structure, cell processes

5.21
 Life’s Basic Requirements
1. Chemicals or nutrients (to supply the building blocks
such as carbon)
2. Energy (to power the system)
3. Genetic code (instructions on how to assemble the
system provided by the DNA molecules)

Molecules of life are busy with the needs of

the cell  ‘metabolism’
• Metabolism involves nutrients (building blocks) and energy
• Energy comes from (a) the Sun, (b) organic chemicals (i.e.
food), or (c) inorganic chemicals (e.g., dissolved CO2)
• Regardless, organisms convert the energy they get into a
form of energy usable by cells, known as ATP (Adenosine
Triphosphate) 5.22
Universal Energy Metabolism

Sunlight,
sugar,
lipid, etc.

5.23
 Most of Life on Earth
is powered by Photosynthesis
• Photosynthesis depends upon compounds (chlorophylls,
in chloroplasts) that are sensitive to visible light and are
able to extract energy from that light

Sugar is stored sunlight (i.e. solar

energy is stored in chemical bonds
of sugar)
This energy is
used to make
ATP, employed in
metabolism
ATP 5.24
Troph – refers to manner of getting nourishment
 Photo – energy from light
 Chemo – energy from chemicals
o Auto – carbon from CO2
o Hetero – carbon from compounds (usually organic) 25
 What was the source of energy for
Earth’s earliest organisms?
• Photosynthesis must have evolved over time (although we
know it to be ancient)
• Early energy sources were likely available chemicals,
lightning, comet impacts, volcanic vents, etc.
• In ancient (and some current) life, ATP was generated
without using oxygen  “anaerobes”
• Aerobic life generates ATP using oxygen
• Aerobic metabolism creates far more ATP than does
anaerobic metabolism

5.26
 How does DNA
(a) save
information and
(b) provide
instructions for
making proteins?

A very few organisms

store this information
in RNA, not DNA
5.27
 From DNA to Proteins
DNA double An RNA strand is built by pairing with one
helix splits by of the DNA helices (‘messenger RNA’)
‘unzipping’

Each triplet A system of enzymes ‘reads’ the sequence

represents of RNA bases, one triplet at a time
‘start’, ‘stop’, or
one of 20 left-
handed amino
acids

A sequence of triplets (a
‘gene’) represents a
sequence of amino acids (a
‘protein) 5.28
 DNA and Evolution

• Our increasing knowledge of genetics has meshed well

with Darwinian evolution
• Changes in genes (changes in bases in the DNA) lead to
changes in protein structure
• Some of the changes (mutations) are beneficial in that
they create new versions of proteins favoured by natural
selection

5.29
 What are the limits of life?

• We are adapted to our set of abiotic (non-living or

physical) circumstances, for example:
– Atmospheric pressure
– Temperature range
• So they seem ‘non-extreme’
• But other organisms have been sculpted by natural
selection for different conditions
• Because they are extreme by human standards, we call
them ‘extremophiles’

5.30
 Extremophiles

• ‘Lovers of extremes’
• Thermophiles (“lovers of heat”)
• Psychrophiles (“lovers of cold”)
• Acidophiles (acid-loving)
• Barophiles (pressure-loving)
• Halophiles (salt-loving)
• Xerophiles (dry-loving)
• Anaerobes (oxygen-hating)
• They occupy ‘extreme’ environments

5.31
 Hot spring, which is
often also very acidic

Ocean floor volcanic

vent (very hot)

Some live in harsh, often Life here copes with

dry, environments inside extreme dryness
32
rocks and cold
Some species that do not normally occupy extreme
environments can cope with harsh conditions by resorting
to an inert state (dormancy) with no metabolism (here, a
bacterial ‘endospore’). It can resume ‘normal’ existence
when conditions return to normal (usually, by the addition of
liquid water).

33
 The Unity of Life
• All life on Earth shares a common ancestry having evolved
from a common origin:
– DNA and universal genetic code
– L-handed amino acids
– Use of ATP for energy metabolism
– Existence as cells with lipid-based membrane
• Earth has a wide variety of life that first arose early in Earth’s
history, almost 4 Gyr ago
• Non-Earth life need not be ‘intelligent’ or even macroscopic
but it will be made of elements from the Periodic Table,
which will follow the same chemistry rules as experienced
here on Earth

5.34