Chemical Evolution: Physics of the Origin and Evolution of Life

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiv

   PDF

2. General Overview

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

      PDF

   2. Cosmic Evolution, Life and Man

      • J. Oro

      Pages 3-19

   3. Experimental Retracement of Terrestrial Origin of an Excitable Cell: Was it Predictable?

      • Sidney W. Fox, Peter R. Bahn, Aristotel Pappelis, Bi Yu

      Pages 21-32

3. Origins

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 33-33

      PDF

   2. Cosmology: the Universe in Evolution

      • G. V. Coyne

      Pages 35-49

   3. From Cosmic Formation of Chiral Bioorganics in Interstellar Dust to Comet Seeds of Life’s Origins: Are 1025 Chances Enough ?

      • J. Mayo Greenberg, Aigen Li

      Pages 51-71

   4. Strategies for the Search of Life in the Universe

      • J. Schneider

      Pages 73-84

4. From Geophysics to Prebiotic Chemistry

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 85-85

      PDF

   2. Age of the Isua Supracrustal Sequence of West Greenland: A plausible repository for early life

      • Stephen Moorbath, Martin J. Whitehouse

      Pages 87-95

   3. Clays as Natural Catalyst in Prebiotic Processes

      • A. Negron-Mendoza, G. Albarran, S. Ramos-Bernal

      Pages 97-106

   4. Role of Transient and Stable Molecules in Chemical Evolution

      • Mohindra S. Chadha

      Pages 107-122

   5. Lightning Associated to Archean Volcanic Ash-Gas Clouds

      • Rafael Navarro-González, Vladimir A. Basiuk, Marcos Rosenbaum

      Pages 123-142

5. Physiochemical Aspects

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 143-143

      PDF

   2. Evolutionary, Kinetic and Thermodynamic Aspects on the Bioenergetics of Inorganic Pyrophosphate (PPi) and Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP)

      • Herrick Baltscheffsky, Margareta Baltscheffsky

      Pages 145-150

   3. Mineral Metal Sulphur Clusters as a Testbed for Studies of Evolutionary Continuity

      • M. S. Kritsky, M. G. Vladimirov, V. A. Otroshchenko, V. A. Bogdanovskaya

      Pages 151-156

   4. Thermal Peptides as the Initial Genetic System

      • Aristotel Pappelis, Sidney W. Fox

      Pages 157-165

   5. Origin of Nucleic Acids

      • Benoît E. Prieur

      Pages 167-169

   6. Origin of Fatty Acids

      • Benoît E. Prieur

      Pages 171-173

6. Biophysical Aspects: General Problems

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 175-175

      PDF

Leading researchers in the area of the origin and evolution of life in the universe contributed to Chemical Evolution: Physics of the Origin and Evolution of Life. This volume provides a review of this interdisciplinary field. In 35 chapters many aspects of the origin of life are discussed by 90 authors, with particular emphasis on the early paleontological record: physical, chemical, biological, and informational aspects of life's origin, instrumentation in exobiology and system exploration; the search for habitable planets and extraterrestrial intelligent radio signals.
This book contains the proceedings of the Fourth Trieste Conference on Chemical Evolution that took place in September 1995, in which scientists from a wide geographical distribution joined in a Memorial to Cyril Ponnamperuma, who was a pioneer in the field of chemical evolution, the origin of life, and exobiology, and also initiated the Trieste Conferences on Chemical Evolution and the Origin of Life. This fourth Conference was therefore dedicated to his memory.
Audience: Graduate students and researchers in the many areas of basic, earth, and life sciences that contribute to the study of chemical evolution and the origin of life.

• ATP
• Amino acid
• Charles Darwin
• Darwin
• evolution
• nucleic acids
• primitive earth
• the origin
• thermodynamics

• International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy

  Julian Chela-Flores

• Instituto Internacional de Estudios Avanzados, Universidad Simon Bolivar, Caracas, Venezuela

  Julian Chela-Flores

• Université Paris XII, LISA, Creteil, France

  François Raulin

Policies and ethics