Life, Volume 9, Issue 4

Two anhydrobiotic strains of the cyanobacterium Chroococcidiopsis, namely CCMEE 029 and CCMEE 171, isolated from the Negev Desert in Israel and from the Dry Valleys in Antarctica, were exposed to salty-ice simulations. The aim of the experiment was t...

We present a direct route by which RNA might have emerged in the Hadean from a fayalite–magnetite mantle, volcanic SO2 gas, and well-accepted processes that must have created substantial amounts of HCHO and catalytic amounts of glycolaldehyde i...

Lipids and amino acids are regarded as important biomarkers for the search for extraterrestrial life in the Solar System. Such biomarkers may be used to trace methanogenic life on other planets or moons in the Solar System, such as Saturn’s icy...

In addition to being one of the proponents of the “Lipid World hypothesis”, David Deamer, together with other colleagues, pioneered studies involving formation of RNA-like oligomers from their ‘non-activated’, prebiotically pl...

Space missions using probes to return dust samples are becoming more frequent. Dust collectors made of silica aerogel blocks are used to trap and bring back extraterrestrial particles for analysis. In this work, we show that it is possible to detect...

The long-term autonomous existence of man in extraterrestrial conditions is associated with the need to cultivate plants—the only affordable and effective means for both providing oxygen and CO2 utilization, and providing one of the most habitu...

How did chemicals first become organized into systems capable of self-propagation and adaptive evolution? One possibility is that the first evolvers were chemical ecosystems localized on mineral surfaces and composed of sets of molecular species that...

Nitrate is common in Mars sediments owing to long-term atmospheric photolysis, oxidation, and potentially, impact shock heating. The Atacama Desert in Chile, which is the driest region on Earth and rich in nitrate deposits, is used as a Mars analog i...

The problem of the emergence and survival of self-replicating molecules in origin-of-life scenarios is plagued by the error catastrophe, which is usually escaped by considering effects of compartmentalization, as in the stochastic corrector model. By...

“The Lipid World” was published in 2001, stemming from a highly effective collaboration with David Deamer during a sabbatical year 20 years ago at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. The present review paper highlights the benefi...