quote:
Originally posted by blitz77:
A recent article in the journal )Astrobiology Vol 2. No. 2 (2002) shows that sea salt destroys fatty-acid membranes and prevents RNA from polymerizing, even at 1/7th the concentration of salt of today's oceans. They effectively dismember membranes and stop RNA units from forming anything longer than dimers. With mechanisms proposed to concentrate these for abiogenesis, it also appears that these mechanisms would also concentrate salt.
Not all bodies of water would contain all that much salt, or life just gradually adapted as salt content increased, just like when the atmosThe requested document is freely available only to registered users with an online subscription to Astrobiology
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[This message has been edited by nos482, 09-23-2002]