Overview

• Researchers at Newcastle University have simulated ancient hydrothermal vent conditions, leading to the creation of key organic molecules, potentially forming the earliest cell membranes.
• The experiments involved combining hydrogen, bicarbonate, and iron-rich magnetite under conditions similar to mild hydrothermal vents, resulting in a range of organic molecules, including fatty acids with up to 18 carbon atoms.
• The findings potentially reveal how some key molecules needed to produce life are made from inorganic chemicals, which is essential to understanding a key step in how life formed on the Earth billions of years ago.
• The researchers suggest that similar membrane-creating reactions could be happening in the oceans under the surfaces of icy moons in our solar system today.
• The team is now focusing on how these organic molecules, initially adhering to mineral surfaces, might have formed spherical membrane-bounded cell-like compartments, potentially the first 'protocells.'