Philippe Starck talks about how life began in the soupe primordiale — but this week, researcher Helen Hansma of UCSB hypothesizes that molecules might have first turned into cells — life — while sheltered between sheets of mica dunked in that soup. Hansma’s “soup and a sandwich” theory was presented Tuesday at the annual meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology in Washington, D.C.
The heating and cooling of the day-to-night cycle would have caused the mica sheets to move up and down, and waves would have provided a mechanical energy source as well, according to the new model. Both forms of movement would have caused the forming and breaking of chemical bonds necessary for the earliest biochemistry.
Image: Biological molecules in spaces between mica sheets. Credit: Helen Greenwood Hansma, UCSB