Everything about Alexander Oparin totally explained
Alexander Ivanovich Oparin (
Uglich,
Russia –
April 21,
1980,
Moscow) was a
Soviet biochemist notable for his contributions to the theory of the
origin of life, and his authorship of the book
The Origin of Life. His other major works were in fields of biochemical grounds for vegetable raw material processing and
enzyme reactions in
plant cells. He showed that many
food production processes are based on the
biocatalysis and developed foundations of the
industrial biochemistry in the
USSR.
Life
Oparin graduated from the
Moscow State University in
1917. In
1924 he put forward a theory of
life on Earth developing through gradual
chemical evolution of
carbon-based
molecules in
primordial soup. In
1935, he along with academician
Aleksei Bakh, founded the Biochemistry Institute by the
USSR Academy of Sciences.. In
1970, he was elected President of the International Society for the Study of the Origins of Life. On his passing on April 21, 1980, he was interred in
Novodevichy Cemetery in
Moscow.
Oparin became
Hero of Socialist Labour in 1969, received the
Lenin Prize in 1974 and was awarded the
Lomonosov Gold Medal in 1979 "for outstanding achievements in biochemistry". He was also awarded five
Orders of Lenin.
Theory of the origin of life
Oparin sometimes is called "
Darwin of the
20th century." Although he began by reviewing the various
panspermia theories, he was primarily interested in how life initially began. As early as
1922, he asserted the following tenets:
1. There is no fundamental difference between a living
organism and
lifeless matter. The complex combination of manifestations and properties so characteristic of life must have arisen in the process of the evolution of matter.
2. Taking into account the recent discovery of
methane in the
atmospheres of
Jupiter and the other giant planets, Oparin postulated that the infant Earth had possessed a strongly
reducing atmosphere, containing methane,
ammonia,
hydrogen, and water
vapor. In his opinion, these were the raw materials for the evolution of life.
3. At first there were the simple solutions of
organic substances, the behavior of which was governed by the properties of their component atoms and the arrangement of those atoms in the molecular structure. But gradually, as the result of growth and increased complexity of the
molecules, new properties have come into being and a new colloidal-chemical order was imposed on the more simple organic chemical relations. These newer properties were determined by the spatial arrangement and mutual relationship of the molecules.
4. In this process biological orderliness already comes into prominence.
Competition,
speed of growth,
struggle for existence and, finally,
natural selection determined such a form of material organization which is characteristic of living things of the present time.
Oparin outlined a way in which basic organic chemicals might form into microscopic localized systems - possible precursors of
cells - from which primitive living things could develop. He cited the work done by
de Jong on
coacervates and other experimental studies, including his own, into organic chemicals which, in solution, may spontaneously form droplets and layers. Oparin suggested that different types of coacervates might have formed in the Earth's
primordial ocean and, subsequently, been subject to a selection process leading eventually to life.
While Oparin himself was unable to do extensive experiments to investigate any of these ideas, scientists were later able to. In 1953, for example,
Stanley Miller performed what is perhaps the first experiment to investigate whether chemical self-organization would have been possible on the early earth. He showed that from a mixture of several simple components of a reducing atmosphere, with the input only of heat (to provide reflux) and electrical energy (sparks, to simulate lightning), a variety of familiar organic compounds such as amino acids were synthesised within a fairly short space of time. The compounds that formed were somewhat more complex than the molecules that were present at the beginning of the experiment.
Bibliography and references
- Oparin, A. I. The Origin of Life. Moscow: Moscow Worker publisher, 1924 (in Russian)
- English translation: Oparin, A. I. The Origin and Development of Life (NASA TTF-488). Washington: D.C.L GPO,1968
- Oparin, A. I. The Origin of Life, Moscow 1936
- English translation: Oparin, A. I. The Origin of Life. New York: Dover (1952) (first translation published in 1938).
- Oparin, A., Fesenkov, V. Life in the Universe. Moscow: USSR Academy of Sciences publisher, 3rd edition, 1956 (in Russian)
- English translation: Oparin, A., and V. Fesenkov. Life in the Universe. New York: Twayne Publishers (1961).
Major works
"The External Factors in Enzyme Interactions Within a Plant Cell"
"The Origin of Life on Earth"
"Life, Its Nature, Origin and Evolution"
"The History of the Theory of Genesis and Evolution of Life"
Footnotes
Further Information
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