Evidence for novel origin-of-life theory

Abstract

Two German chemists have reported experimental evidence they say supports a controversial theory that hot-spring vents in the ocean depths could have been the birthplace of life on Earth some 4 billion years ago. The earliest organisms, they suggest, fed on carbon monoxide and used the sulfides that spew from these undersea hydrothermal vents [ Science , 276, 245 (1997)]. The theory that sparked these experiments was developed by Gunter Wachtershauser, a patent attorney in Munich who has a doctorate in organic chemistry but no laboratory of his own. In a series of peer-reviewed journal papers dating from 1988, he has theorized that the earliest metabolic reactions began on the surface of minerals such as pyrite (FeS 2 ), whose positively charged surface could attract simple inorganic molecules and catalyze them to form more complicated organic molecules. Wachtershauser's speculative ideas have drawn a sometimes hostile reaction from leading researchers in the field. Now, he and Claudia Huber of the ...