Miller, Stanley

Miller, Stanley L. From the Primitive Atmosphere to the Prebiotic Soup to the Pre-RNA World. Washington, D.C. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 1996. 

Miller, Stanley Lloyd (b. 1930) American chemist who studied the... 

Fig. 3-1 Schematic of the apparatus Stanley Miller used to demonstrate formation of amino acids from simple inorganic compounds under conditions similar to those of the early Earth.

Then came the year 1953, and with it important events, both political and scientific in nature the death of Stalin and the determination of the structure of DNA in addition, a scientific article was published in Science by a previously unknown author, Stanley L. Miller. Its title was A Production of Amino Acids under Possible Primitive Earth Conditions (Miller, 1953). 

Stanley Miller at the University of Chicago more than 50 years ago. This experiment (in fact, of course, many were carried out prior to the successful one) is probably as well known as the Wohler synthesis of urea Miller s doctoral supervisor, Harold Urey (winner of the Nobel Prize in 1934), had suggested to Miller that he simulate a reducing primeval Earth atmosphere (as required by the Oparin-Haldane hypothesis) to electrical discharges and see what happens . Urey apparently expected that such an experiment would lead to a huge variety of organic compounds. 

The purine base guanine is also formed in concentrated solutions of ammonium cyanide, i.e., the same substance which became known from Or6 s adenine synthesis. Or6, as well as Stanley Miller, was involved in a new series of experiments (Levi et al., 1999). The yield of guanine is, however, 10 10 times lower than that of adenine surprisingly, the synthesis is just as effective at 253 K as at 353 K. Low temperatures seem conceivable in certain parts of Earth as well as on the Jovian moon Europa (see Sect. 3.1.5) or in the Murchison meteorite. 

The importance of this sensational discovery for biogenesis research only became apparent in the next few years (Lahav, 1999). It is clear that prebiotic chemistry is much more complex and versatile than was thought about 50 years ago, when Stanley Miller carried out his first successful amino acid syntheses. Experiments similar to the ones described above, as well as new ones which must first be devised, could help to slowly close the wide gap which still exists between the prebiotic and the living worlds (Wills and Bada, 2000). 

One of the founding fathers of prebiotic chemistry, Stanley Miller, took up this question. The PNA polymer consists of ethylenediamine monoacetic acid (EDMA) units, which can also be called A-(2-ami noclhyl )-gl yci nc (AEG). 

In the same year, Miller and the biologist Antonio Lazcano (National Autonomous University of Mexico) spoke out against hypotheses that life could have originated at hydrothermal vents. They believe that the presence of thermophilic bacteria (the oldest life forms) does not prove that biogenesis occurred in the depths of the oceans. Stanley Miller sees a greater chance for successful pre-biotic chemistry under the conditions of a cold primeval Earth rather than at high temperatures in hydrothermal regions (Miller and Lazcano, 1995). 

About three years after Wachtershauser s first publication appeared, an article by Christian de Duve and Stanley Miller was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences under the title Two-Dimensional Life the title alluded to the theory of reactions at positively charged pyrite surfaces (de Duve and Miller, 1991). Their criticisms of the chemoautotrophic theory were directed particularly towards certain kinetic and thermodynamic aspects, but also to theoretical statements for which no experimental support was available. 

Keefe et al. (1995) from Stanley Miller s laboratory reported a possible prebiotic synthesis of pantetheine, the part of the CoA molecule without its ADP moiety. They were able to synthesize the CoA precursor from P-alanine, pantoyllactone and cysteamine. This condensation requires concentration of the reaction mixture the warm lagoon theory is required here in order to achieve prebiotic conditions ... 

This year has sadly seen the deaths of two of the pioneers of research on the origin of life Stanley L. Miller and Leslie Orgel. They provided us with vital insights and advances, and they will be greatly missed. Their approach to scientific research should serve as a model for the coming generation. 

Rappuoli, Rino, Henry I. Miller, and Stanley Falkow. 2002. The Intangible Value of Vaccination. Science 297(5583) 937-938. 

Figure 3.3 The famous Stanley Miller experiment a strongly reducing atmosphere consisting of the four gases, and electric discharges as energy source.

The idea that the first living systems, which resulted from a process of chemical evolution beginning with the synthesis and accumulation of organic compounds (i.e., the heterotrophic hypothesis), gained significant support in 1953. This was when Stanley L. Miller, then a graduate student working with Harold C. Urey at the... 

The field of the origin of life has progressed very much from the time of Stanley Miller s first experiment. However, the main hypothesis, that cellular life derives from inanimate matter, has not been demonstrated yet. It must then be considered still a working hypothesis. Not that we have alternatives within the realms of science, and I have outlined in Chapter 1 why divine creation cannot be considered as an alternative within science. Of course the question of God is not one that is solved in terms of rationality, but in terms of faith, and we are back to zero. 

Lazcano, A. and Bada, J. L. (2003). The 1953 Stanley L. Miller experiment fifty years of prebiotic organic chemistry. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph., 33, 235 2. 

David G. I. Kingston, Maged Abdel-Kader, Bing-Nan Zhou, Shu-Wei Vang, John M. Berger, Hendrik van der Werff, Randall Evans, Russell Mittermeier, Stanley Malone, Lisa Famolare, Marianne Guerin-McManus, Jan H. Wisse, and James S. Miller... 

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