Soda lakes might hold the key to the emergence of life on Earth. These unique environments could have concentrated the ...

Laboratory experiments have shown that prebiotic chemistry requires very high phosphorus concentrations, about 10,000 times ...

Large soda lakes may have provided the high phosphorus levels needed for life to begin on Earth, offering a new explanation ...

"As soon as life develops in them, their phosphorus supply would be depleted faster than it is replenished. This would nip in the bud both the chemical reactions and the developing life," says Walton.

Large soda lakes - those without natural runoff - could have built and sustained extremely high concentrations of phosphorus.

It consists of just a few kinds of atoms: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and phosphorus ... one for each side of the ladder.) A sugar molecule, a base, and a phosphate molecule group together ...

This backbone is composed of alternating sugar and phosphate groups, and defines directionality of the molecule. DNA and RNA are composed of nucleotides that are linked to one another in a chain ...