LIFE MAY HAVE BEGUN IN CLAY

Mountain View, California:

The theory that life arose from a chemical "soup" in the oceans is

being challenged by scientists who have found evidence that a common

clay possesses basic properties essential to the generation of life.

"The functional attributes that we associate with life are not

necessarily confined to organic systems," said Lelia Coyne, a San Jose

State University chemist who led the research team.

The researchers have verified that clay can store and transfer

energy, which would allow it to act as a chemical factory for the

generation of life, they told a symposium last week at the National

Aeronautics and Space Administration's Ames Research Center.

The "clay-life theory," first proposed in the 1960's by chemist

Graham Cairns-Smith of the University of Glasgow, challenges the

long-favored notion that life emerged from the primordial oceans after

millions of years of chemical reactions between simple organic

molecules.

It also is reminiscent of the Bible's account in Genesis of the

Creation, which says, "And the Lord God formed man of dust of the

ground," and refers to it commonly as clay.

Cairns-Smith said he believes that clay was not just a catalyst for

life but the actual "low-tech" material that gave rise to

progressively more sophisticated or "high-tech" life forms.

"The recognition that many of the specific functions of living

systems can be performed by inorganic molecular systems is forcing us

to re-examine, at a real, fundamental level, the definition of life,"

Coyne said.

The "primordial soup" theory, set forth in the 1930's by the Soviet

scientist A.I. Oparin, suggests that the chemical evolution of life

was random, while the clay-life theory proposes a patterned

development.

"Most of the chain-lengthening organic reactions that have to occur

[to create life] ... occur through the elimination of water. It's hard

to eliminate water in an aqueous environment," Coyne said. "You can

have an awful lot of organic matter, but if you dump it in the water,

it may not look like much. If you want to lengthen chains, you have to

have a lot of these molecules close together. It's easier to grow

things on surfaces."

Research by Armin Weiss of the University of Munich suggests that

clay, which has a mineral structure almost as intricate as a DNA

molecule, could be capable of such lifelike attributes as reproducing

crystal structures from a "parent" clay to several generations of

"daughter" clay.

Cairns-Smith suggests that the creation of life could have been

directed by an inorganic pattern developed in clay.

Other theories, such as that life reached Earth from outer space in

the form of spores, do not answer the fundamental question of creation

- for instance, what created the spores?

The finding that a common ceramic clay can store and transfer

energy - sometimes in the form of radioactivity - has been confirmed

through experiments showing that clays release soft ultraviolet light

when they are wetted with organic liquids or water, irradiated, dried,

crushed or ground up.

Despite the new evidence, "the majority of people who work on the

origin of life would probably still vote for the old- fashioned soup,"

said Leslie Orgel, a biochemist at the Salk Institute in La Jolla.

Lisa Levitt Ryckman ... On Associated Press, April 7, 1985