Biology life on earth notes

THE ORIGINS OF LIFE ON EARTH

The Earth is about 4.6 billion

years old
It was very different than of
today

How do we know?

Conditions and chemicals on other

planets in our solar system
The chemicals that erupt from volcanic
vents today, and probably always have

Spontaneous Generation
of life

Throughout history until

about 150 years ago, many
believed that life could just
appear spontaneously
maggots just happened in rotting meat, things would just arise
This concept was proven wrong in 1862 by Louise Pasteur

By the 1880s cell theory was

established (all cells (life)
come from pre-existing cells

Chemicals first, then cells

Chemicals present in the atmosphere of primitive earth contained
exactly the same chemical elements that organic chemicals of life are
made from (mainly CO2, H, O, N)
In in the 1920s, it was suggested by 2 scientists that conditions on
earth 4 billion years ago:
Caused chemical reactions that made complex organic molecules
Then these chemicals somehow came together to form a living
organism
Once life got started, it evolved into the species we see in the fossil
record and those alive todays
The Urey Miller experiment: was designed in the 1950s to test the first
part of this hypothesis (conditions of primitive earth could spontaneously
produce complex organic molecules necessary for life to start
Significance of Urey Miller experiment
1) Demonstrates how Science works, formulating a hypothesis, testing

2) Didnt prove how life got started on Earth, the experimental results
support the hypothesis by showing that life-forming chemicals could
have been produced naturally under the conditions of the primitive
Earth
3) In combination with evidence from: Space Exploration, Vulcanology
& Earth Chemistry Ancient Rocks & Fossils Study of Primitive
Life Alive Today and other areas of scientific study, the Urey-Miller
experiment is just one part of a package of evidence that seems
consistent with the idea that life formed naturally on the primitive
Earth 4 billion years ago, and has evolved into what we see today

Life from outer space?

The hypothesis that Urey & Miller tested is not the only idea for the
origins of life

It has been suggested that the first living things on Earth (or at least
the chemicals they formed from) could have come from outer space

so far the weight of evidence supports the hypothesis that Earth life
arose on Earth, and not somewhere else

Technologies That Helped Us Understand

Radiometric Dating

It is the method that allows us to measure the age of rocks & fossils

Atoms of each chemical element are not all exactly the same
They have the same number of protons & electrons (thats what
makes them that element), but the number of neutrons in the atom
can vary (making them an isotope)
Some isotopes are radio-active and give off nuclear radiations...
hence radioisotopes.
Radio-isotopes decay at a predictable rate

By measuring the amount of radiation

present now, and knowing the half-life of
the isotope, the age of objects can be
calculated
most famous example is Carbon Dating
which uses an isotope of carbon (called
carbon-14) to find the age of artifacts from
human history
It has a half-life of about 5,700
Carbon-14 is not much use beyond about
40,000 years, but there are other isotopes
(e.g. potassium and uranium) with half-lives
of many millions of years
These can measure the ages of fossils and
rocks formed millions/ billions years ago
This Radiometric Dating is how we know

Electron microscope
Allows scientists to study very ancient fossil cells in rocks and to
make comparisons with some types of primitive cells
Gives us further clues about how ancient life-forms lived and
evolved
Biochemical Analysis & DNA Technology

Used to identify the remains of victims of war or natural disasters; By

comparing DNA samples from a body part with samples from the
relatives of missing people
same technique can be used to find the relatedness of different
living things, and even give estimates of how long ago 2 related
species divided
E.g. (DNA studies suggest that humans and chimpanzees are closely
related; our DNA is 99% identical)
Biochemistry and DNA studies have shown: All life forms on Earth
are related. (means that all living things today evolved from 1
original type). Which types are more closely, or more distantly,
related. (complements the evidence of the fossil record, gives us a
clearer picture of the exact sequence of evolution)

History of life on earth

Summary of the Main Events

following time-line identifies the major stages in the evolution of life

on Earth
main evidence for this has come from fossils preserved in sedimentary
rocks
The times suggested are approximate, but based on radio- metric
studies of the rock

1) Formation of organic molecules

Began as soon as the Earth was cool

enough forthe molecules to existwithout
being torn apart

The Urey-Miller experiment (and many

others) prove sugars, amino acids, lipids
and the building blocks of DNA and
RNA could form spontaneously in the
chemical conditions of the primitive
Earth

4 billion years ago, early oceans must

have become a chemical soup, highly
concentrated in organic molecules

2) Molecules Formed Membranes

It is thought that the next crucial

step was the formation of
membranes

In watery environment of the oceans,

hydrophobic molecules naturally
tend to cling together, like oil
forming droplets in water

Experiments have shown that some lipid molecules in water will,

quite naturally, form microspheres with other chemicals trapped
inside

3) The first living cells

Microspheres which trapped inside themselves a
mixture of chemicals that could attract other
molecules in through the membrane, they
became bigger (i.e. feeding & growing) and also
cause copies of their own molecules to be built,
(e.g. small RNA)

thesphere wouldsplit in two,(reproduction)each part witha share of

theessentialchemicals tomake it all happen over again

We cant be sure when this happened, but by about 3.8 billion years
ago we find chemical evidence of living cells in some rocks, and by

3 billion years ago there are fossils of bacteria-like cells, in various

forms... they were evolving into new types already

These cells lived without oxygen (anaerobic) and were probably

feeding on the soup of organic molecules in oceans

4) A Billion Years of Scavenging

For 1,000 million years the most advanced organisms on Earth were
bacteria-like cells which lived without O2, and scavenged the organic
soup of organic molecules in oceans

Probably the production of organic molecules (food) was still

occurring as in the Urey-Miller experiment, but the whole regime
(scientific process) was about to change...

5) Chemosynthesis & Photosynthesis

About 2.8 billion years ago, a new type of bacteria appears in the
fossil record

The fossils appear similar to autotrophic bacteria alive today, which

make their own food, using energy from chemicals in the
environment. This process is called Chemosynthesis

2.3 billion years ago, fossils of cells recognisable as cyanobacteria

appeared. These are bacterial type cells, but use chlorophyll to trap
sunlight, and

They grew in shallow seas in structures called

stromatolites which we find as common
fossils in rocks from this time. Living
stromatolites still grow in some places today.

produce OXYGEN as their waste

product

6) The World Goes Oxic

Up until

this time the Earth was

anoxic(completely without any uncombined

oxygen (O ).
2
There were plenty of oxygen atoms , they were all
chemically combined in (H O) and CO and
2
2
various other compounds.

Now the cyanobacteria began modern style photosynthesis in

millions of stromatolites, for millions of years

We find huge deposits of evidence for what happened next... the world
went rusty!

In many parts of the world (including Western Australia) we find huge

deposits of Banded Ironstone; rock containing layers of iron oxide
(Fe O ). The iron mineral is very fine grained as if precipitated from a
2 3
water solution.

The explanation is that, in the anoxic early conditions a lot of iron was
2+
dissolved in the oceans in the soluble form of Fe
ions.
As the cyanobacteria began releasing vast quantities of O oxygen, it
2
reacted with the iron forming the insoluble Fe O iron oxide (which is
2 3
RUST).

Eventually, after about 200 million years, all the iron was precipitated,
and now the oxygen began building up in the atmosphere... the air
became OXIC.

This had four important consequences: 1. The natural production of organic chemicals by the Urey-Miller process
stopped forever. Oxygen is chemically active enough to destroy organic
molecules as fast as they could form. Life could never again start up the way
it once did.
2. The old-type anaerobic bacteria found oxygen poisonous, so many became
extinct. A few survived in environments where there is no oxygen, and there
they live to this day... you will study them soon.
3. Atmospheric oxygen allowed development of an ozone layer. This absorbs
UV rays and was vital for the later development of life on land.
4. The oxic environment encouraged a new, more efficient way to use food
energy... cellular respiration. By 2 billion years ago the familiar modern
cycle was operating:

ATP is the energy compound

which powers all life processes...
cell division, moving, growing
etc.

7) The First Eucaryotic Cells

More advanced living things on Earth today are characterized by

cells containing many organelles built from and/or surrounded by
membranes. Such cells are called eucaryotic.

Prior to about 1.5 billion years ago, all life on Earth was procaryotic
meaning that the cells lack a true nucleus, mitochondria, chloroplasts,
etc. The living procaryotes of today are the bacteria and cyanobacteria

Without true organelles to organize their cell functions better, the

procaryotes have to remain very tiny, single cells in which diffusion
distances are small, and the SA/Vol ratio is high

thats how life on Earth might have remained forever, except some
cells ate some smaller cells, but failed to digest them

The small cells lived on inside their host in a relationship that soon
became mutualism, and after millions of years, the ingested cells
evolved to became organelles of the larger cell

Whats the evidence for this?

Both mitochondria & chloroplasts contain their own DNA, and it
is bacteria-like DNA in a loop.These organelles reproduce
independently of the rest of the cell in a mini-version of a cell
division.
Mitochondria contain their own ribosomes for making their own
proteins.
Mitochondrial enzymes (which control cellular respiration) are
attached to the inner membrane in a very bacteria-like way.

This whole idea is known as the Endosymbiotic Hypothesis and is

our best explanation of where the first

cells came from that later evolved into
the plants and animals.

(Endo- = inside,symbiosis = to live

together)

8) Sex Speeds Things Up

So far in the history of life, all the

living things probably reproduced by

simple cell division.

This produces identical daughter cells, The only way a new variation
could occur was by occasional genetic accidents ... mutations. So
the evolution of new types was very slow.
A little over 1 billion years ago, some cells began exchanging bits
of DNA with each other
Fossils have been discovered (using the electron microscope) of 2 cells
joined by a thin tube apparently in conjugation, in which the cells
swap DNA fragments in a kind of simple sexual fertilisation of each
other.
CELLS in CONJUGATION
Small fragments of DNA are passed through the tube, increasing the
genetic variations within a population

The result is more genetic

variations and more
differences between
individuals.
Evolution had more opportunities, and sure enough, the fossil record
shows an accelerating increase in new, more complex forms appearing

9) The First Multicellular Organisms

appeared about 800 million years ago

It is often an advantage for an organism to be large. A larger organism

deters predators and gathers more of the resources of the
environment, so its chance to survive and thrive is better

a single cell cannot grow too large because the SA/Vol ratio gets less

About 800 million years ago some eucaryotic, photosynthetic cells

became colonial. When the cells divided, they didnt separate, but
stayed attached to each other, forming filaments or flat sheets

These simple, multicellular associations evolved into the algae group

and from one type of them, came (eventually) the plants

Some eucaryotic, heterotrophs became colonial to evolve into the first

multicellularanimals, similarto modernsponges. Latercame flatworms
and jellyfish-likecreatures withvery simple bodyplans

About 600 million years ago there came an explosion of life. We find
a huge increase in fossil numbers and forms, partly because some
types developed shells and other hard body parts that fossilized well

Science Clashes with Culture?

Darwins Theory of Evolution caused tremendous controversy when

published in 1859 because it was not consistent with the Biblical story
of divine creation and many people saw this as an attack on their
religion and their culture

Even today, there are some religious groups who reject the entire
concept of the Evolution of Life because they interpret their
traditional, cultural or religious stories of creation very literally

Most mainstream religions however, accept that Science is not trying

to attack any belief, culture or tradition, but only to understand and
explain the natural world

Most religious organizations now accept the Facts of Evolution that

life on Earth has existed for billions of years, and has undergone
progressive change

Many Christian churches, for example, accept the scientific evidence

for the age of the Earth, the beginnings and history of life, and
recognise that the creation stories in Genesis are not literally true,
but are allegories to the power and benevolence of the JudaicChristian-Islamic God

The belief is that evolution happened, but under Gods control and
supervision, along a pathway he ordained

It is quite possible to reconcile religious belief and faith with scientific

enquiry and knowledge

Each contributes in its own way to human culture, and to each

individuals humanity