The origin of life

Lynn Poole shows the proceedings of "A Chemical Basis of Heredity," a symposium of biochemists and geneticists. Dr. Kenneth Monty, a biochemist professor at Johns Hopkins University, discusses research on the effect of radiation on chromosomes and Russian A. I. Oparin's theory of the origin of life. A chart shows single-celled organisms, such as amoebae, and Dr. Monty comments on reproduction from a single cell. The 1953 Urey-Miller experiment attempted to recreate the conditions of the primordial atmosphere with carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen resulting in the precursors of amino acids, the main components of living cells. Scientist Sidney Fox also discovered that amino acids will organize spontaneously into protein molecules. Animated segments show amino acids, proteins, and nucleotides and how accidents in the original cells resulted in mutation, heredity, and evolution. Nucleic acids are the carriers of heredity and responsible for transformation. Dr. Franco Rasetti, a Johns Hopkins professor of physics who worked with Enrico Fermi in Rome, discusses his 10,000-specimen collection of trilobites or fossilized remains of marine life. He shows specimens and photos of various trilobites as old as 500 million years and notes that there is a gap between one-celled organisms and these diversified forms of life from the Cambrian Period. He shows a map of Cambrian rock exposures in the U. S. and briefly explains how to find and remove fossils.