Jeffrey Bada
(1942-)
Jeffrey Bada was a student of
Stanley Miller, who left his laboratory at UC San Diego and all its equipment and materials to Bada.
Bada then reproduced Miller's original experiments to see what pre-biotic chemicals might be produced in simulated atmospheres starting with only inorganic chemicals. He found traces of more amino acids than Miller had detected.
Bada also studied organic compounds outside of the Earth. He analyzed the Martian meteorite Nakhla, found in Egypt in 1911. He found the amino acids aspartic acid, glutamic acids, glycine, alanine, beta-alanine, and gamma-aminobutyric acid in the meteorite. Pre-biotic precursors of life are not only on the surface of the early Earth, but in outer space!
Like our
information origin of life, Bada thinks it began with replication. Metabolism and other characteristics come later, although the formation of "information molecules" needs a low-entropy stream of energy, like that from the Sun or from deep-sea hydrothermal vents.
"Imperfect replication of informational molecules would have marked the origin of both life and evolution, and thus the transition from non-living chemistry to biochemistry."
Some of the imperfect replicas (mutations?) would have had improved survival rates, and the rest is history.
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