Essential Knowledge 1.D.1

There are several hypotheses about the natural origin of life on Earth, each with supporting scientific evidence.

Scientific evidence supports the various models. Primitive Earth provided inorganic precursors from which organic molecules could have been synthesized due to the presence of available free energy and the absence of a significant quantity of oxygen. In turn, these molecules served as monomers or building blocks for the formation of more complex molecules, including amino acids and nucleotides. The joining of these monomers produced polymers with the ability to replicate, store and transfer information. These complex reaction sets could have occurred in solution (organic soup model) or as reactions on solid reactive surfaces. The RNA World hypothesis proposes that RNA could have been the earliest genetic material.

Students should be able to:

LO 1.27 Describe a scientific hypothesis about the origin of life on Earth.

LO 1.28 Evaluate scientific questions based on hypotheses about the origin of life on Earth.

LO 1.29 Describe the reasons for revisions of scientific hypotheses of the origin of life on Earth.

LO 1.30 Evaluate scientific hypotheses about the origin of life on Earth.

LO 1.31 Evaluate the accuracy and legitimacy of data to answer scientific questions about the origin of life on Earth.