New research supports an idea that the Red Planet was a better place to kick-start biology billions of years ago than the early Earth was.

 

The evidence is based on how the first molecules² necessary for life were assembled.

 

Details of the theory were outlined by Prof Steven Benner at the Goldschmidt Meeting in Florence, Italy.

 

Scientists have long wondered how atoms first came together to make up the three crucial molecular³ components⁴ of living organisms: RNA, DNA⁵ and proteins.

 

The molecules that combined to form genetic⁶ material are far more complex than the primordial⁷ "pre-biotic" soup of organic (carbon-based) chemicals thought to have existed on the Earth more than three billion years ago, and RNA (ribonucleic acid) is thought to have been the first of them to appear.

 

Simply adding energy such as heat or light to the more basic organic molecules in the "soup" does not generate RNA. Instead, it generates tar¹.

 

RNA needs to be coaxed⁸ into shape by "templating" atoms at the crystalline surfaces of minerals.

 

The minerals most effective at templating RNA would have dissolved in the oceans of the early Earth, but would have been more abundant on Mars, according to Prof Benner.

 

This could suggest that life started on the Red Planet before being transported to Earth on meteorites⁹, argues Prof Benner, of the Westheimer Institute of Science and Technology in Gainesville, US.

 

The idea that life originated on Mars and was then transported to our planet has been mooted¹⁰ before. But Prof Benner's ideas add another twist to the theory of a Martian origin for the terrestrial biosphere¹¹（陆地生物圈）.

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