(ORDO NEWS) — Cyanide is known in popular culture as a poison that spies love to use. And scientists from the United States have conducted studies that indicate that this compound could contribute to the origin of life.
Cyanides are hydrocyanic acid salts. They are a carbon atom that is triple bonded to a nitrogen atom. Scientists in the US conducted laboratory studies and found that cyanide could cause the so-called metabolic reactions.
This caused the formation of carbon compounds from carbon dioxide. This was also one of the steps that allowed life on Earth to emerge.
Poison and life
Scientists have conducted a number of studies. As a result, they have obtained chemical reactions in which carbon dioxide and water combine to create more complex compounds necessary for the origin and existence of life on Earth.
The problem was that these compounds require complex proteins that did not exist on the young Earth 4 billion years ago.
Scientists did not lose their heads and used a compound that definitely existed in the early stages of the origin of life – cyanide.
They carried out a new series of studies to study new chemical reactions. It turned out that cyanide perfectly interacts with substances and promotes chemical reactions to form the so-called tricarboxylic acid cycle.
Of course, scientists do not insist that it was this compound that played a decisive role in the formation of life, but this is an important discovery that makes it possible to look at ancient events from a different angle.
Interestingly, what can kill a person today, billions of years ago, contributed to the appearance of the first organisms.
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