Image courtesy of Zack Cohen/University of Washington
Joel Kontinen
What is the “Last Chance Lake? It is a shallow, extremely salty pool of water with
an unusual chemistry.
The lake has phosphate concentrations 1,000 times higher than the ocean, making
it a modern analog
Evolution
believing scientist say that it has been around 4 billion years ago. ”Phosphate is an essential ingredient to make nucleotides — the building blocks of DNA and
RNA — and other life-forming compounds, such as lipids. Although
phosphate is bound up in every living being, the element by itself is scarce in
nature.”
"Someone
coined the phrase 'the phosphate problem' for the origin of life, which is that
you need a lot of phosphate for these reactions," Sebastian Haas, a
postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Earth and Space Sciences at the
University of Washington, told Live Science. "The second
part of the problem is that phosphate is usually low in the environment, and
the only real exception we know are these kinds of lakes."
Last Chance Lake is one of
several so-called "soda lakes" — lakes that have high levels of
dissolved sodium and carbonate. That makes them similar to bowls of water
containing large amounts of dissolved baking soda. This chemical makeup enables
these lakes to have high concentrations of phosphate.”
So some evolution
believing scientist say that it may have given life on Earth.
Source:
Sascha Pare. 2024, Last Chance Lake: The unusual 'soda lake' with conditions that may have given rise to life on Earth | Live Science19 July.
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