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. 2007 Sep;1(3):156-68.
doi: 10.2976/1.2759103. Epub 2007 Jul 25.

The origin of modern terrestrial life

Patrick Forterre, Simonetta Gribaldo

The origin of modern terrestrial life

Patrick Forterre et al. HFSP J. 2007 Sep.

Abstract

The study of the origin of life covers many areas of expertise and requires the input of various scientific communities. In recent years, this research field has often been viewed as part of a broader agenda under the name of "exobiology" or "astrobiology." In this review, we have somewhat narrowed this agenda, focusing on the origin of modern terrestrial life. The adjective "modern" here means that we did not speculate on different forms of life that could have possibly appeared on our planet, but instead focus on the existing forms (cells and viruses). We try to briefly present the state of the art about alternative hypotheses discussing not only the origin of life per se, but also how life evolved to produce the modern biosphere through a succession of steps that we would like to characterize as much as possible.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Schematic of bottom-up and top-down approaches.
Major events discussed in the text are highlighted.
Figure 2
Figure 2. Competition between vesicles in the early RNA world [adapted from Chen (2006 )].
Lipid vesicles containing mineral catalysts (hexagons) and able to incorporate ribose (R) and polyphosphate (PP) grow by capturing lipids from vesicles containing amino acids (AA) only. The growth of vesicles induces a proton gradient (H+) that is used to facilitate the transport of various compounds, followed by the synthesis of small RNA oligomers (crosses). After division, vesicles containing RNA replicators (red crosses) grow at the expense of those containing RNA without self-replicating activity (blue crosses). These grow further using additional RNA (green barrel) to facilitate the transport of small polar molecules.
Figure 3
Figure 3. LUCA was the last bottleneck in a long series of ancestors to the three present-day cellular domains: Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukarya.
Extinct lineages may have coexisted for some time with the descendants of LUCA, and transferred some features to them (yellow arrows). The emergence of a universal code in an earlier bottleneck organism may have been favored by preferential transfer between organisms sharing the same genetic code.
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