SCIENCE The Origin of Life Conference

By J. H. Bradley THE RECENT conference in Moscow on the origin of life has been given very little publicity in the British Press.

This is especially unfortunate, as it brought together for the first time notzd experts in many _fields—Professor H. C. Urey, geophysicist from Chicago. Professor J. D. Bernal, biophysicist from London, Academician A. I. Oparin, biochemist from Moscow, Academician A. P. Vinogradov, geochemist from Moscow, and others—each specializing in one of the many new branches of science indispensable to an understanding of this most complex of all studies.

The problem is no longer to suggest means by which life could have evolved (for everyone is agreed that under the conditions of our planet it would eventually do so) but to find the means by which in fact it did evolve.

We no longer have to deal with theories of divine intervention, or of the import of life on a meteorite, which give unlimited scope by being quite unverifiable.

* cS * Studies by Professor Urey on meteorites roughly parallel those of Academician Schmidt in the USSR. and suggest that the Earth formed about 1.000 million vears ago. The presence of light compounds. such as water, shows that it was never much above its present temperature. and confirms the beautiful photographs of meteorites showing them to have been broken in fragments at fairly low temperatures. and never melted since.

The composition of the elements on Earth sugaesis ‘hey were formed around 3.000 million years ago in a very hot star—above the temperature of the present H-bombs—as there are many heavy elements like uranium and lead.

The work of Academician Fesenkov on new stars and light mainly to the right. Pasteur first showed that the corresponding left-handed substances were often of no use to living organisms. ‘ Academician Oparin has made a close study of systems in which droplets separate out of a solution, forming little jellylike masses which might have evolved into cells under undisturbed conditions.

Nearly everybody is agreed that the first organisms proper had one cell. but ii is very doubtful whether these were bacteria as we now know them.

Biochemical studies are revealing many basic chemical mechanisms used by all forms of life: some adduce the adaptability of bacteria as evidence that they are primitive, while others think that adaptability can depend only on a highly evoived complexity.

This argument is one question which. happily. Zhdanov overlooked. and his lesser rivals had not the knowledge or the wit to build up a dogmatic body of pseudo-Marxism tied to the party.

Very few people pay much attention to the claims of Olga Lepeshinskaya to have observed the formation of cells from cell-free material—though her work is not an unmitigated waste. in that it has drawn attention to biochemical processe outside the living cell.

Work on the origin of life is not likely to cast any light on the evolution of higher organisms. though some sketchy attempts were once made by Haldane to relate such evolution to the conditions on Earth. and to see why an organism like man should be the predominant form. — Tt is not possible to review the particular work of the Moscow conference yet, nor would a proper review be very useful unless the reader knows something of the basis of argument and the different opinions. =