What contribution did urey and millers experiments make to hypotheses about the origins of life?
They showed that amino acids, nucleic acids (DNA bases) and other simple organic molecules could be synthesized naturally under primordial circumstances just with lightning striking tide pools, thus supplying the building blocks for biogenesis to begin spontaneously. Miller hypothesized that a mixture of water (H2O), methane (CH4), ammonia (NH3) and hydrogen (H2) but no oxygen resembled the atmosphere of the early earth. The mixture was kept circulating by continuously boiling and then condensing the water. The gases passed through a chamber containing two electrodes with a spark passing between them. At the end of a week, Miller used paper chromatography to show that the flask now contained several amino acids as well as some other organic molecules. In the years since Miller’s work, many variants of his procedure have been tried. Virtually all the small molecules that are associated with life have been formed: 17 of the 20 amino acids used in protein synthesis, and all the purines an
