Eis und die Entstehung des Lebens

Many different locations on the primitive earth have been proposed as possible places for the origin of life. Experimental investigations of sea ice, in particular the studies of one author in the arctis and findings in the literature, incited us to propose sea ice as a matrix suitable for the evolution of living systems. This heterophasic environment, hitherto disregarded by theories dealing with the origin of life, offers in our opinion excellent conditions for the development of primitive genetic elements. Sea ice can concentrate substances considerably. The intramolecular and intermolecular base-pairing of RNA strands, reactions that are widely accepted to be crucial for the evolution of living systems, are stabilized by the low temperature and the high ionic strength of the brine formed in the liquid channels. Sea ice conditions seem to be ideal for the development of an RNA replication system and an “RNA World”. In addition, sea ice offers still widely unexplored possibilities in sorting and specific catalysis which seem to be favourable for prebiotic reactions in general. This paper presents the available informations about the sea ice environment. It wants to encourage scientists of different fields to take sea ice into consideration for theoretical and experimental studies of the origin of life.