Professional Documents
Culture Documents
DEFINITION OF LIFE
- Fred Spire
Around 4.4 billion years ago, the first seas formed, wherein a soup of
chemicals formed in them and also in the atmosphere.
The first chemicals that were present in the seas and in the
atmosphere are the following:
Nitrogen
Nitrogen Oxide
Carbon Dioxide
Methane
Ammonia
Hydrogen
Hydrogen Sulfide
+ Heat and Lightning
RNA
A single-strand molecule that reads the
program orders from the DNA and sets
in motion the production of the proteins
necessary to accomplish them.
Where did the DNA and RNA came
from?
RNA WORLD HYPOTHESIS
postulates that there mightve been an
earlier version of just RNA, which was
capable of both coding and self-replicating,
and out of which separate and more
complex structures evolved, DNA.
DNA REPLICATION
an amazing, flabbergasting process that allows
life to copy itself and sustain its own complexity.
But even if it copies a living organism with
stunning precision, once every billion copies or
so, there is an error. These errors result in slight
mutation.
On the scale of
million of years, these
copying errors are the
engine of evolution
and the origin of new
species.