ORIGIN OF LIFE

Did you know when and where did life

start on earth?
The Concept of Life

Earth is much older than life. Based on radioactive

decay studies of rocks, it was revealed that Earth is around
4.5 billion years old
---- 1 billion years older than the oldest fossil.
 HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT:

• Spontaneous generation/Abiogenesis
- life could appear from nonliving matter.
- proposed by Aristotle, 4th -17th century
• Biogenesis
- life originates from pre-existing life.
 THEORIES:

 Divine creation
- many people believe that life was put on
Earth by divine forces.
- creation theories are common to many of the
world`s religions and culture.
 Origin from nonliving matter
- life came from spontaneous origin evolved
from inanimate matter after Earth had cooled. They stated that
random events probably produced stable molecules that could
self-replicate. Then, natural selection favored changes in the
rate of reproduction, which evwntually led to the first cell.
 Panspermia
- the theory presumes that the “seed” of life exist
all over the universe and can be propagated through
space, and that life on Earth originated from those
seeds.
 Extraterrestrial origin
- the hypothesis explain that life originated on
another planet outside the Solar system. Life was
then carried to Earth on a meteorite or asteroid and
colonized Earth.
- The first cell were the Prokaryotes– organism whose
cell have no nucleus. The first prokaryote were
anaerobic; which means they do not need and could not
tolerate free oxygen.
- Organisms that need oxygen could not have survived
because Earth lacked free oxygen.
EARLY LIFE FORM
 Earth`s age, as estimated by several independent
studies, is about 4.5 Ga. So far, no fossils have been found in
the oldest rocks, which are about 3.8 Ga.
The oldest fossils that have been discovered were found
in 3.5 billion year-old rocks that were once sediments on the
ocean floor. The tiny fossils that were found in these ancient
rocks were BACTERIA.
 Biologist separate the bacteria into two groups according to
the composition;
Eubacteria – also known as the true bacteria. Most living
bacteria including those that cause disease and decay are
Eubacteria.
Archaebacteria – an ancient bacteria are rare. They are found
mainly in hostile environment where conditions resemble those of
early Earth.
Bacteria is believed to be the first life forms on Earth.
 - biologist believed that the oxygen of early Earth`s
atmosphere was produced by bacteria.
- about 3 Gya, a group of photosynthetic bacteria
known as Cyanobacteria, evolved.
- Cyanobacteria are believed to have evolved from
Eubacteria.
- Cyanobacteria or Chlorobi ( Green Sulfur Bacteria )
• Life was only able to move onto land because of a change in
the atmosphere. As cyanobacteria added oxygen gas to the
atmosphere, large amounts of oxygen began to diffuse onto the
upper atmosphere, producing ozone.
• Before the ozone was formed, all life were restricted to the
oceans. But due to the new ozone layer that acted like a shield,
which blocked ultraviolet radiation, the radiation levels on
Eath’s surface went down to a level that allowed life to move
onto dry land.
• More complex life forms appeared in the fossil record. These
organism known as Eukaryotes were much larger than prokaryotes,
and they contained a central nucleus and a complicated internal
structure.
• Over the past 1.5 billion years, eukaryotic cell have evoled into
organisms that are composed of many cells.
• By about 400 Mya, enough ozone had formed in the atmosphere to
make Earth’s surface a safe place to live in.
• The first living things to populate the surface of Earth were Plants and
Fungi.
• The solution to the challenge of living on dry land was a unique
mutualistic partnership between plant and fungi called
Mycorrhizae.
• Mycorrhizal association shows a mutualistic relationship of
plants and fungi.
• Plants provide food to the fungi while fungi provide nutrients
obtained from organic matter to the plants .
• Animals soon followed plants onto land. The first animals to
leave tha water were arthropods.
• Arthropods are animals with hard body covering and jointed
legs. The first arthropods to live on land were scorpions.
• They are carnivorous ralatives of species with two large pincers
on their front legs and a venomous stinger at the end of their
tails.
• From the scorpions, a unique ckass of terrestrial arthropod soon
evolved: insects.
• Insects were the first animals to develop wings.

• more complex animals began to evolve. Worm-like animals, the

earliest known animals with notochords, existed.
• Chordates or animals with notochords and vertebral column are called
Vertebrates.
• The earliest vertebrates were Jawless fishes with bony skeletons.
• Today the Jawless fishes are the eel-like.
• The first vertebrates on land were tge amphibians, which evolved
from bony fishes about 350 Mya.
• Amphibians – are small vertebrates that need water or a moist
environment.
• Repltiles evolved from amphibians about 300 Mya.
• Reptiles – are cold blooded vertebrates they have dry covered
with scales.
• Mammals – warm blooded vertebrates with hair and feed their
young with milk.
CHARACTERISTICS OF LIFE
 CHARACTERISTICS OF LIFE

- the characteristics common to all living things that

are considered in the study of life are cellular organization,
metabolism, homeostasis, reproduction and heredity.
• Cellular Organization
- all cells have the same basic structure: a MEMBRANE that
encloses the cell and controls materials that move in and out;
- an internal fluid known as the CYTOPLASM where the
organelles are suspended;
- and a NUCLEUS that contains the hereditary genes called
DNA.
- organism can either be made up of only
one cell (UNICELLULAR) or made up of
many cells (MULTICELLULAR)
• Metabolism
- the sum of all chemical processes that maintain the
living state of an organism is called metabolism.
- all living things use energy. Moving, growing, thinking-
everything we do requires energy.

“where does all this energy come from?”

 - it is captured from sunlight by plants and algae. To get
the energy needed, plants or plant-eating animals are
consumed. These food are converted into a useful form of
energy.
- all organisms use energy to grow, and all organisms
transport this energy from one place to another within cell
using special energy-carrying molecules called ATP.
• Homeostasis
- all living things maintain stable internal conditions.
While the environment often varies a lot, organism act to keep
their interior conditions relatively constant in a process called
homeostasis.
- the human body maintains an internal temperature of
37 ˚ C, however hot or cold the weather may be.
• Reproduction
- all living things reproduce. Reproduction involves the
transfer of genetic information from parents to offspring.
- reproduction can be ASEXUAL or SEXUAL.
Asexual reproduction – produces offspring that are
genetically identical to a single parent.
Sexual reproduction – involves two parents contributing
genetic information to produce a unique offspring.
• Heredity
- the transmission of characteristics from parent to
offspring is called heredity.
- all organism posses a genetic system that is based
on the replication and duplication of a long molecule
called Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA).
- the information that determines what an
individual organism will be like is written in a
code dictated by the sequence of the DNA
molecule. Each set of instruction within the DNA
is called a gene.
UNIFYING THEMES IN LIFE SCIENCE
In addition to the characteristics, life is unified by certain themes.
These six themes are level of organization, the flow of energy,
evolution, interacting systems, structure and function, ecology and
science and society.
• Levels of Organization
- these are the hierarchy of increasing complexity within cells, from
the molecular level of DNA to the organelle level and to tge cellular level.

• The flow of Energy

- energy is used by organism to grow and do work. Almost all the
energy that living things need to obtained from the sun. Plants capture the
energy from sunlight in a process called photosynthesis. The flow of
energy among organism helps determine how organisms interact within
their environment .
• Evolution
- the theory of evolutions helps explain how all kinds
of organisms came to existence. It explain why organisms look
the way they do. Life form slowly changing and have
apprantly been changing.
- Charles Darwin proposed the theory of evolution by
natural selection which presumes that organisms with more
favorable traits would be more likely to survive and reproduce
in a certain environment. These favorable trait are called
adaptations.
• Interacting Systems
- living things interact with each other and with the environment. A
living community is highly structured and interdependence.
Example: Flowering plants and insects have been coevolving through
cooperation.

• Structure and Function

- a relationship exist between structure and function at all.levels of
biological organization. In Biology, structure is always related to function.
Within the many kinds of organisms in the living world, body structure
seem to be carefully designed to carry out their functions.
• Ecology
- is the study of complex communities of organisms in relation to their
environment.
- organisms need the physical environment to survive. They need
substances like water, nutrients and gases from the environment. The stability of
the environment in turn deoends on the healthy functioning of organisms in that
environment.

• Science and Society

- knowledge from biological science can be applied to specific problems
in the society to improve human life. For example the development of a vaccine
against covid19 was a scientific breakthrough that had a large impact on society .