How did chemisty and oceans produce this?

Need to concentrate monomers together to facilitate polymer formation. If left as a dilute mixture in the early oceans, monomers will never form long chains of molecules because the concentration is too low.

Step 2: Concentrate the Monomers:

• Local Evaporation (clays) --> Tides ?
• heat from expelled lava (St. Helens)
• tidal pools (bigger tides)
• freezing of water

4 billion years ago the moon was substantially closer to the earth than it is now. Large lunar tides coupled with storms could have formed transient inland lakes. When that water is evaporated over a period of weeks/months then a rich mixture of monomers would settle into the clays that formed the lake bottom.

Clays --> Silicate Surfaces --> acts as a catalyst

Peptide chains of around 100 amino acids can be found today

Does the reaction on the silicate surfaces favor L amino acids?

Step 3: BIG, Unknown Next Step --> need to organize a system capable of self-replication (e.g. DNA)

• Organic polymers in high concentration seperate out from liquid medium as individual droplets --> proto-cells
• long chain molecules can act as a membrane

EVOLTUIONARY ADVANTAGE: Polymers that could reproduce themselves will survive

• Trial and Error until "right" combination is acheived (DNA)
• every living organism on the earth has DNA
• Fossil Record indicates that single celled life first emerged 3.5 billion years ago
• Therefore it took one billion years to go from atmospheric chemistry to blue green algaes via the oceanic pathway
• All you need is time?

Once a genetic code is discovered which allows cell reproduction, there is no need to further search for a perhaps more "efficient" genetic code since the ability to reproduce represents a quantum leap in the ability to survive.

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