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Last Chance is a shallow body of water, no more than a foot deep. (Representative photo)
A lake in Canada holds clues to the origin of life on Earth, a new study claims. Some scientists claim that life arose in volcanic landscapes, surrounded by a precise combination of chemicals and physical conditions. This was the likely scenario about four billion years ago, and the study by David Catling and his colleagues offers new support for the idea. They studied Last Chance Lake, a shallow, salty body of water located on a volcanic plateau in British Columbia, Canada.
The researchers said the lake contains clues that carbonate-rich lakes on ancient Earth could have been a “cradle of life.” The study has been published in diary Nature on January 9.
“We were able to look for the specific conditions that people use to synthesize the building blocks of life in nature. We think we have a very promising place for the origin of life,” said Catling, a professor of geosciences at the University of Washington. .
They were drawn to the lake after studying an unpublished master’s thesis from the 1990s that had recorded unusually high levels of phosphate there.
Last Chance is a shallow body of water, no more than a foot deep. It is located on a volcanic plateau more than 1,000 meters above sea level. The lake has the highest levels of concentrated phosphate ever recorded in any natural body of water on Earth. It is more than 1,000 times more than is typical in oceans or lakes, cnn cited Sebastian Haas, a postdoctoral researcher who studies the microbiology and chemistry of aquatic environments at the University of Washington. He is the lead author of the article.
Phosphate is a critical component of biological molecules and contains phosphorus, a life-sustaining element. It is found in molecules such as RNA and DNA.
Water samples were collected from the lake between 2021 and 2022. An analysis revealed that, in addition to phosphate, the water also contained the mineral dolomite.
Composite chemical processes, influenced by minerals in the volcanic rock on which the lake formed, as well as an arid climate, effectively produced unique concentrations of phosphate, a set of conditions that researchers believe may have once led to the emergence of life on Earth, according to Mr. Haas.