Atmospheric aerosols as prebiotic chemical reactors

Atmospheric aerosols as prebiotic chemical reactors

^*Oxford Centre for Molecular Sciences, New Chemistry Laboratory, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QT, United Kingdom; ^†Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309-0215; and ^‡National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Aeronomy Laboratory, David Skaggs Building, 325 Broadway, Boulder, CO 80305-3328

Communicated by Susan Solomon, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Boulder, CO (received for review June 12, 2000)

Abstract

Aerosol particles in the atmosphere have recently been found to contain a large number of chemical elements and a high content of organic material. The latter property is explicable by an inverted micelle model. The aerosol sizes with significant atmospheric lifetimes are the same as those of single-celled organisms, and they are predicted by the interplay of aerodynamic drag, surface tension, and gravity. We propose that large populations of such aerosols could have afforded an environment, by means of their ability to concentrate molecules in a wide variety of physical conditions, for key chemical transformations in the prebiotic world. We also suggest that aerosols could have been precursors to life, since it is generally agreed that the common ancestor of terrestrial life was a single-celled organism. The early steps in some of these initial transformations should be accessible to experimental investigation.

Footnotes

↵ § To whom reprint requests should be addressed. E-mail: tuck{at}al.noaa.gov.
Article published online before print: Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 10.1073/pnas.200366897.
Article and publication date are at www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.200366897