Scribd
Upload
167 views5 pages

Miller Urey Experiment

The Miller-Urey experiment was the first to experimentally test the hypothesis that amino acids, the building blocks of life, could form from simple chemical reactions on the early Earth. Stanley Miller and Harold Urey simulated early Earth conditions by exposing a mixture of gases thought to constitute the early atmosphere - methane, ammonia, hydrogen and water vapor - to electric sparks mimicking lightning. Within a week, up to 15% of the carbon in the methane had reacted to form simpler compounds like formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide, which then combined to produce amino acids like glycine and alanine. This provided experimental evidence supporting the hypothesis that life could arise from natural chemical reactions and showed prebiotic chemistry could produce key building blocks of life.

Uploaded by

Maria KPOP
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
167 views5 pages

Miller Urey Experiment

The Miller-Urey experiment was the first to experimentally test the hypothesis that amino acids, the building blocks of life, could form from simple chemical reactions on the early Earth. Stanley Miller and Harold Urey simulated early Earth conditions by exposing a mixture of gases thought to constitute the early atmosphere - methane, ammonia, hydrogen and water vapor - to electric sparks mimicking lightning. Within a week, up to 15% of the carbon in the methane had reacted to form simpler compounds like formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide, which then combined to produce amino acids like glycine and alanine. This provided experimental evidence supporting the hypothesis that life could arise from natural chemical reactions and showed prebiotic chemistry could produce key building blocks of life.

Uploaded by

Maria KPOP
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 5

Miller–Urey Experiment

The Miller-Urey experiment was the first attempt to


scientifically explore ideas about the origin of life. The
purpose was to test the idea that the complex
molecules of life (in this case, amino acids) could have
arisen on our young planet through simple, natural
chemical reactions.

Dr. Alka Misra


Department of Mathematics & Astronomy
University of Lucknow, Lucknow Page 1
Miller–Urey Experiment

The building blocks of life have been discovered and characterized


since the early 19th century. Regarding the synthesis of molecules of prime
interest to the origin of life, two major achievements shall be given. In 1850,
Adolf Strecker succeeded in the first laboratory synthesis of an amino acid:
alanine from a mixture of acetaldehyde (CH3CHO), ammonia (NH3), and
hydrogen cyanide (HCN).

A few years later, in 1861, Alexandr Butlerov performed the first


laboratory synthesis of sugar mixtures (also known as the formose reaction)
from formaldehyde (HCHO) using a strong alkaline catalyst (NaOH).
Although these discoveries were very interesting, they were not linked to the
origin-of-life problem. Hence, little progress was made in finding a scientific
description of the origin of life was introduced by Aleksandr Ivanovich
Oparin.

Oparin introduced the concept of chemical evolution, which could be


seen as the roots of the Darwin theory of evolution. In this concept, life was
the result of successive spontaneous chemical reactions that produce
increasingly complex chemical structures. He suggested that such chemical
evolution would take place within an oxidizing atmosphere of the primitive
Earth.

After sometime he made some modifications in his early concepts and


changed the early atmosphere to a highly reducing environment. Similar
ideas were simultaneously given by the English biologist John Haldane, who
was the first to mention the concept of a “prebiotic soup” where chemical
evolution took place. Oparin and Haldane’s ideas were expressed at a

Dr. Alka Misra


Department of Mathematics & Astronomy
University of Lucknow, Lucknow Page 2
theoretical level only. The experimental confirmation of the theory of
chemical evolution was provided in 1953 by Stanley Miller and Harold
Clayton Urey. They conceived and built an experiment to simulate a putative
primitive Earth environment.

In this experiment a gaseous mixture of hydrogen (H 2), methane


(CH4), ammonia (NH3), and water (H2O) was exposed to an electric
discharge that simulated that of storm lightning. The mixture was connected
to a bulb filled with liquid water that could be heated. It was found that within
a week 15% of carbon originally present as methane had converted into
other simple carbon compounds. Among these compounds were
formaldehyde (HCHO), hydrogen cyanide (HCN). These compounds then
combined to form simple molecules, such as formic acid (HCOOH) and urea
(NH2CONH2) and more complex molecules containing carbon-carbon bonds
including the amino acids glycine and alanine.

The resulted production of a large amount of organic molecules,


including several amino acids was the experimental proof of the theory of
chemical evolution. This experiment showed that the chemistry between
simple molecules, which were abundant in the atmosphere of the primitive
Earth, led to the synthesis of key compounds that in turn might have led to
the forms of life on Earth.

Dr. Alka Misra


Department of Mathematics & Astronomy
University of Lucknow, Lucknow Page 3
Miller–Urey experiment set-up, which simulates in the laboratory the coupled chemistry
between the primitive Earth atmosphere (upper right bulb) and warm oceans (lower left
bulb). In the first version, an atmosphere made of CH4, NH3, H2O, and H2 was considered.
A spark discharge simulated storm lightning

The mixture of CH4, NH3, H2 and H2O creates a reducing atmosphere


and considered due to following reasons:

 CH4, NH3, H2O, and H2 had been detected in the atmosphere of giant
planets since the 1930 s.

 All the primitive atmospheres of planets were identical, captured


from the Solar Nebula.

Dr. Alka Misra


Department of Mathematics & Astronomy
University of Lucknow, Lucknow Page 4
 Giant planets, cold and distant from the Sun, have kept their original
composition.

Therefore, Urey and Miller concluded that the current composition of the
atmosphere
of giant planets of the Solar System was a good proxy for the composition of
the atmosphere of the primitive Earth.

Miller–Urey experiment is not as conclusive:


This experiment was a great achievement because it showed that that
important prebiotic compound scan be abiotically synthesized in
environments simulating “natural” conditions.

But there are several findings which prove the conclusion of this
experiment wrong!

1. It is now quite well established that telluric planets do not have sufficient
mass to capture the Solar Nebula gas like the giant planets did. To do
this, a minimum mass of 10 to 15 Earth masses is required. Only then
can a forming planet efficiently trap the volatile elements of the nebula to
form its atmosphere. In addition, recent observations have supported the
conception that at a distance of one astronomical unit (AU) from the Sun
– that is where the Earth accreted – the gaseous component of the Solar
Nebula was probably dominated by CO2 and N2.

2. Earth, like Venus and Mars, has a secondary atmosphere built from
volatile compounds that outgassed from the mantle on one hand or were
imported via meteorites and comets on the other hand.

3. Third, the composition of the primitive Earth atmosphere was most


probably dominated by CO2 and N2, in which organic syntheses are not
as efficient as in a reducing atmosphere.

Dr. Alka Misra


Department of Mathematics & Astronomy
University of Lucknow, Lucknow Page 5

You might also like