BIOL 1001 Chapter : Chapter 17
Document Summary
People used to believe that new organisms sprang up all of the time through spontaneous generation: microorganisms from broth, maggots from meat, mice from sweaty clothes and wheat. Louis pasteur - pasteur also performed experiments that refuted spontaneous generation. How did life begin: the first living things must have come from nonliving materials, we know that organic molecules can form spontaneously from non-living materials under low oxygen conditions, this has been experimentally supported- fig. The first living things must have come from nonliving material: some rna molecules, called ribozymes, can catalyze reactions, membrane-like vesicles may have enclosed ribozymes forming protocells, but there is no real evidence of how life began. Early earth: earth is 4. 5 billion years old, early earth was thought to be very hot with a lot of volcanic activity and electrical storms- fig. 17. 4: early earths atmosphere lacked oxygen gas.
