<\/p>\n
<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The reality is Deamer and the psychedelics-inspired Damer may very well be right about the origin of life on Earth. They may never win over scientists like <a href=\"https:\/\/nautil.us\/the-big-thinker-238542\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Nick Lane<\/a>, an evolutionary biochemist at University College London, who argues life needed the singular mix of physics and chemistry in hydrothermal ocean vents to originate. As recently as 2024, Lane and chemist Joana C. Xavier of Imperial College London <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-024-00544-4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">explained<\/a> in <em>Nature<\/em> that the wet and dry cycles of hot springs, key to Deamer\u2019s and Damer\u2019s hypothesis, could not lead to \u201cthe network of hundreds of reactions that keeps all cells alive.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>However, biologist Jack Szostak, a Nobel laureate, whose lab at the University of Chicago focuses on the origin of life, told me it\u2019s likely that life did begin in volcanically active regions or impact craters on Earth\u2019s surface. \u201cDeep sea hydrothermal vents are not a plausible site for the origin of life,\u201d he said. \u201cGeothermally active areas,\u201d he added, \u201care attractive because they do provide the environmental fluctuations needed to drive the primordial cell cycle.\u201d Synthetic biologist Kate Adamala, from the University of Minnesota, who builds artificial protocells to probe how life might have first taken shape, agreed. \u201cI\u2019m on Team Dave and Bruce,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Presented with either criticism or praise of his origin-of-life theory, Damer remained as sanguine as ever. \u201cYou\u2019re never going to have a complete understanding of the origin of life on the early Earth, because we just can\u2019t reproduce the exact conditions,\u201d he said. Of course, he believed the hot springs hypothesis would stand the test of time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The reality is Deamer and the psychedelics-inspired Damer may very well be right about the origin of life on Earth. They may never win over scientists like Nick Lane, an evolutionary biochemist at University College London, who argues life needed the singular mix of physics and chemistry in hydrothermal ocean vents to originate. As recently [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":599,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,219],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-227330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/599"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227330\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}