The primordial soup theory may have had a secret ingredient added to its mix that brought forth, LIFE.

Reading through the Georgia Tech release, the initial reaction one can muster is, it could not have been that easy. Though not discounting the researcher's efforts, they may have set-aside that the primordial soup theory also relied heavily on chance. The untainted conditions have to be present for it to be viable. After all, there was still no one around to add ingredients necessary to the mix

A theory called abiogenesis is what the 'primordial soup theory' is anchored on. It theorized that organic matter already present on earth were exposed to some form of energy that caused chemical reactions, that in a process that probably took millions of years, formed the enzymes that are the foundations of the present genetic code.

In their research, they cite the ingredients to be rain, molecules, sunshine, let cool and add thickener. This thickener they say is the key, the viscous ingredient that could have started Ribonucleic Acid (RNA) to replicate itself in gooey pools in prebiotic Earth.

Georgia Tech researchers Christine He and Isaac Gallego added an off-the-shelf viscous solvent that served as a thickener to their simulated pre-biotic soup to slow down a process called strand inhibition. Their findings gave a straightforward answer as to how today's gene code was able to replicate even before the enzymes necessary to the process even existed.

The viscous solvent they used was glycholine. Obviously, glycholine didn't exist on pre-biotic Earth and they acknowledged this but they simply dismissed this by saying "other viscous solvents likely were." It would have helped if they provided a conjecture what solvent were present then.

When the short strands matched up to the long strands, they applied an enzyme to join the short pieces into a long chain employing a process called biochemical ligation. Again, those enzymes are obviously non-existent in prebiotic earth.

Tags Dna, Research, Evolution, Life