Lost City pumps life-essential chemicals at rates unseen at
typical black smokers Chemistry at Atlantic hydrothermal vent
site may be analog for origins of life FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Relations Office January 31, 2008 Hydrocarbonsmolecules
critical to lifeare routinely generated by the simple
interaction of seawater with the rocks under the Lost City
hydrothermal vent field in the Atlantic Ocean, according to
research led by the University of Washington and the Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). The production of such
building blocks of life makes Lost City-like vents strong
contenders as places where life might have originated on Earth,
according to Giora Proskurowski and Deborah Kelley, two authors
of a paper in the Feb. 1 issue of the journal Science.
Researchers have ruled out carbon from the biosphere as a
component of the hydrocarbons in Lost City vent fluids.
Hydrocarbons--molecules with various combinations of hydrogen
and carbon atoms--are crucial to cellular life. For instance,
cell w