Scientists Claim First Life on Earth May Happen in Underwater
- space.com
VoxPop – The origin of life on Earth remains a mystery, but scientists have slowly managed to piece together the pieces of the genetic puzzle to learn more about how the first life on Earth lived, between 2.5 and 4 billion years ago.
Uniquely, scientists have claim that the first life on earth may have occurred underwater, where this life was protected from the sun's harmful ultraviolet rays.
As quoted from the Space website on Wednesday, August 3, 2022, scientist from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of California, Riverside, Edward Schwieterman has used machine learning to trace the evolutionary development of a protein-based molecule called Rhodopsin back to some of the most ancient forms of microbial life known to exist. ever existed on Earth.
"It's like taking DNA from multiple grandchildren to reproduce the DNA of their grandparents," the astrobiologist Edward Schwieterman of the University of California Riverside explained.
The researchers also suspect that rhodopsin provided battery power for early life, converting light from the sun into energy.
Meanwhile on modern earth, rhodopsin can absorb blue, green, yellow and orange light which is also tangentially related to the light-absorbing rods and cones that the eye uses to see the world.
Schwieterman and his friends start this search by using machine learning to search for genes that control rhodopsin in the widest possible range of life on Earth, then identify the genes with the longest lineages.
Foto permukaan bumi diambil dari luar angkasa
- NASA
This analysis also shows that ancient rhodopsin was only able to absorb blue and green light. This diminished ability makes sense in scenarios where early life may have originated in the oceans.
Why is it like that? because blue and green light wavelengths penetrate deeper into water than other optical wavelengths, meaning being able to absorb these wavelengths to obtain energy will be very important.
The oceans were probably one of the few safe places for early life to form, as most of the planet's surface would be beyond the boundaries of life.
