O tridente de Netuno Considerações sobre a bioquímica da origem da vida

• Main Author: Willian Silvestre Bendazzoli
• Format: Article
• Language: Portuguese
• Published: Universidade Nove de Julho 2003-01-01
• Series: ConScientiae Saúde
• Online Access: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=92900216

The origin of life is a polemical scientific-philosophic question that has been debated for ages. The theory of Spontaneous Generation, which declared that organisms sprouted spontaneously from various nature materials, permeated science since the Pre-Socratic philosophers age until the end of the 19th century, when it was declined by Louis Pasteur, who showed that life can not be originated from lifeless matter. The modern knowledge concerning cellular biochemistry teaches us that a cell is a highly complex and organized system. The current studies concerning the origin of life search to reproduce the chemical processes occurred in our planet by the supposed age in which life could has begun. Some explanations have been proposed to explain part of the question the synthesis of aminoacids by single substances was carried out by Stanley Miller, during the mid 20th century. Reactions of carbohydrates, nucleotides and complex macromolecules formation have been currently investigated. The origin of the complex biological macromolecules is maybe originated from atoms of positively charged metals that can attract polymerized monomers. Thioesters have been considered as possible precursors of the current cellular methabolits. Presently it has been accepted the proposition of RNA as an informative and catalytic substance implicated in the earliest origin of life processes.