                   LIFE MAY HAVE BEGUN IN CLAY

.    Mountain View, California:

.    The theory that life arose from a chemical "soup" in the oceans is being 
challenged by scientists who have found evidence that a common clay possesses 
basic properties essential to the generation of life.
.    "The functional attributes that we associate with life are not necessarily
confined to organic systems," said Lelia Coyne, a San Jose State University 
chemist who led the research team.
.    The researchers have verified that clay can store and transfer energy, 
which would allow it to act as a chemical factory for the generation of life, 
they told a symposium last week at the National Aeronautics and Space 
Administration's Ames Research Center.
.    The "clay-life theory," first proposed in the 1960's by chemist Graham 
Cairns-Smith of the University of Glasgow, challenges the long-favored notion 
that life emerged from the primordial oceans after millions of years of 
chemical reactions between simple organic molecules.
.    It also is reminiscent of the Bible's account in Genesis of the Creation, 
which says, "And the Lord God formed man of dust of the ground," and refers to 
-More-it commonly as clay.
.    Cairns-Smith said he believes that clay was not just a catalyst for life 
but the actual "low-tech" material that gave rise to progressively more 
sophisticated or "high-tech" life forms.
.    "The recognition that many of the specific functions of living systems can
be performed by inorganic molecular systems is forcing us to re-examine, at a 
real, fundamental level, the definition of life," Coyne said.
.    The "primordial soup" theory, set forth in the 1930's by the Soviet 
scientist A.I. Oparin, suggests that the chemical evolution of life was random,
while the clay-life theory proposes a patterned development.
.    "Most of the chain-lengthening organic reactions that have to occur [to 
create life] ... occur through the elimination of water. It's hard to eliminate
water in an aqueous environment," Coyne said. "You can have an awful lot of 
organic matter, but if you dump it in the water, it may not look like much. If 
you want to lengthen chains, you have to have a lot of these molecules close 
together. It's easier to grow things on surfaces."
.    Research by Armin Weiss of the University of Munich suggests that clay, 
which has a mineral structure almost as intricate as a DNA molecule, could be 
capable of such lifelike attributes as reproducing crystal structures from a 
"parent" clay to several generations of "daughter" clay.
.    Cairns-Smith suggests that the creation of life could have been directed 
by an inorganic pattern developed in clay.
.    Other theories, such as that life reached Earth from outer space in the 
-More-form of spores, do not answer the fundamental question of creation - for 
instance, what created the spores?
.    The finding that a common ceramic clay can store and transfer energy - 
sometimes in the form of radioactivity - has been confirmed through experiments
showing that clays release soft ultraviolet light when they are wetted with 
organic liquids or water, irradiated, dried, crushed or ground up.
.    Despite the new evidence, "the majority of people who work on the origin 
of life would probably still vote for the old-
fashioned soup," said Leslie Orgel, a biochemist at the Salk Institute in La 
Jolla.

Lisa Levitt Ryckman ... On Associated Press, April 7, 1985

