Category: Stanley L. Miller

Volcanic gas may have played big role in life on Earth

October 8, 2004

Scientists are reporting a possible answer to a longstanding question in research on the origins of life on Earth -- how did the first amino acids form the first peptides? Peptides and proteins are strings of amino acid building blocks, and they are one of the most important classes of biological molecules found in living things today. Fifty years of chemical research on the origins of life has shown that amino acids could have formed spontaneously on the early Earth environment or could have been introduced onto the early Earth from meteorites.