Early Earth and the Origin of

Life
 Conditions of early Earth
• Solar system: 10-20 billion years old
• Earth: about 4.6 billion years old
• Immense heat from meteorite impact
• Intense lightning, volcanic activity, UV
radiation
• Atmosphere: water vapor, H2, CH4, and
NH3 (from volcanic eruptions)
• Oxygen was not present.
 Stanley Miller: abiotic synthesis of
organic molecules is possible
• Set up an experiment in 1953 to simulate the
conditions of early earth (water vapor, hydrogen,
methane, ammonia.)
• Electrodes (to simulate lightning) discharged
sparks into the flask
• At the end of one week: a variety of organic
molecules, including amino acids, were present
• Similar conditions still exist near submerged
volcanoes and deep sea thermal vents.
Stanley Miller in the lab
The apparatus
 Four main stages of the formation
of simple cells:
• 1) the abiotic synthesis of small organic
molecules such as amino acids and nucleotides
• 2) the joining of these small molecules into
macromolecules such as proteins and nucleic
acids
• 3) the packaging of these molecules into
“protobionts”, droplets with membranes (distinct
‘inside’ and ‘outside’)
• 4) the origin of self-replicating molecules that
eventually made inheritance possible (DNA or
RNA)
Protobiont
 “RNA World” Hypothesis
• States that the first genes were short strands of
RNA that replicated themselves without the help
of proteins.
• Experiments support this idea because:
• 1) Short RNA molecules can assemble
spontaneously from nucleotides.
• 2) Then an RNA chain complementary to one of
these chains assembles.
• This RNA replication process might have been
aided by RNA molecules that acted as catalysts:
ribozymes.
Hypothesis for the origin of the first
genes
 Major Events in the History of Life
• 1) Origin of prokaryotes (3.9 bya)
• 2) Origin of photosynthesis (2.7 bya)
• 3) Origin of single-celled eukaryotes (2.1 bya)
*Endosymbiosis
• 4) Origin of multicellular eukaryotes (1.2-1.5
bya)
• 5) Larger and more diverse multicellular
eukaryotes (600 mya)
• 6) Colonization of land (500 mya): plants and
fungi together
• *fish—amphibians—reptiles—birds—mammals
 The Geologic Record
• Ages of rocks/fossils: by radiometric
dating (C-14; P-40)
• Time lines are marked by extinctions
(mass extinctions between eras, and
lesser extinctions between periods)
The Geologic Record
 Mass Extinctions
• Five over the past 500 million years.
• The Permian (the Great Dying): over
57% of all families, 96% of all marine
species
• The Cretaceous: all non-avian dinosaurs
extinct; asteroid collision finished an
extinction that was probably already
underway due to climate change and/or a
spike in volcanic activity
 Developmental Genes and
Evolution
• “Evo-devo”: research field that includes
evolutionary and developmental biology
• Many genes that program development
(master control genes, aka homeotic
genes) are highly conserved (found across
multiple lineages)
• Changes in the number, nucleotide
sequence, and regulation of these genes
have led to the huge diversity in body
forms
 Phylogeny
• Is the evolutionary history of a species
• Chronicled by:
– The fossil record
– Convergent evolution: analogy (similar
environments favor similar adaptations) Ex.
Bird, bat, and insect wings
– Molecular similarities
– Complex structures (such as skulls of humans
and chimps)
 Cladistics
• Based on the concept that evolution proceeds
when a new heritable trait develops in an
organism and is passed on to its descendants.
• Is the most widely used method is systematics
(focuses on classification and determining
phylogeny).
• Groups organisms into clades (a group of
species that includes one ancestral species and
all of its descendants)
• Used to create phylogenetic trees (aka
cladograms).
Cladogram
Cladogram (ingroups vs outgroup)
 Molecular Systematics
• Comparing nucleic acids or other
molecules to infer relatedness
• rRNA changes very slowly; is good to
compare taxa that diverged hundreds of
millions of years ago
• mtDNA (mitochondrial DNA) evolves
rapidly and can be used to investigate
more recent evolutionary events
 Genome Evolution
• Homologous genes are widespread over
huge evolutionary distances
• Gene duplication has played an important
role in evolution because it increases the
number of genes in the genome.
– Ex. Olfactory genes: over 1,000 genes for
smell receptors due to duplications of the
ancestral olfactory gene
 Molecular Clocks
• Some regions of genomes accumulate changes
at constant rates
• A molecular clock can be calibrated in actual
time by graphing the number of nucleotide
differences against the dates of evolutionary
branch points known from the fossil record.
• Ex. HIV has evolved like clockwork since 1959.
Extrapolating backwards suggests that that HIV-
1M spread to humans during the 1930s.
 The Three-Domain System
• Adopted due to flaws in the 5 kingdom system revealed
by molecular studies
• The prokaryotes diverged very early into the bacteria
and archaea
• Archaea are more closely related to eukaryotes than
prokaryotes
• Based largely on rRNA genes
• Substantial interchanges of genes occurred early
through horizontal gene transfer: genes are transferred
from one genome to another through plasmid exchange,
viral infection, and even fusion of different organisms
• Eukaryotes are probably a fusion of an early bacterium
and an early archaean.