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From Soup to Cells: The Origin of Life

Internet Module

Directions: Use this online module to learn more about life’s origins.  Click through the pages and read the information then, answer all questions on this sheet as they come up.  Click on highlighted word links to find out what they mean.

Link From soup to cells — the origin of life

From soup to cells — the origin of life

1. Many lines of evidence help illuminate the origin of life including:

2. In one sentence, describe what radiometric dating is.

3. In one sentence, describe what phylogenetics is.

When did life originate?

4. Evidence suggests that life first evolved around ___________________________________.

5. What are microfossils?

6. What are stromatolites and how are they made?

                          Modern stromatolites in Shark Bay, Australia

Cross sections of 1.8 billion year old fossil stromatolites at Great Slave Lake, Canada

Where did life originate?

7. What three locations are scientists exploring as possible locations for the origin of life?

8. Why are hydrothermal vents a current hypothesis for the origin of life?

9. What is a common ancestor?  LUCA

How did life originate?

10. Life almost certainly originated in a series of small steps, each building upon the complexity that evolved previously:

        1. Simple organic molecules were formed.

• What is a nucleotide?

        2. Replicating molecules evolved and began to undergo natural selection.

• What is natural selection?

            3._(write the title)____________________________________________________.

        4. Some cells began to evolve modern metabolic processes and out-competed those            with older forms of _____________________.

        5. Multicellularity evolved.

• How old are the fossils pictured, called Bangiomorpha pubescens?

Studying the origin of life

11. Major lines of evidence in studying the origin of life include:

12. What are the three Domains of living things called?

Origins and biochemical evidence

13. What is biochemistry?

Origins and experimental evidence

14. How do experiments about the origin of life help scientists?

A Knotty Problem

All the evidence gathered thus far has revealed a great deal about the origin of life, but there is still much to learn. Because of the enormous length of time and the tremendous change that has occurred since then, much of the evidence relevant to origins has been lost and we may never know certain details. Nevertheless, many of the gaps in our knowledge (gaps that seemed unbridgeable just 20 years ago) have been filled in recent years, and continuing research and new technologies hold the promise of more insights. As Ellington puts it, "Origins is a huge knotty problem — but that doesn't mean it's an insoluble one."

15. Why do you think there are gaps in our knowledge and our understanding of life’s origins?