crystals Article The Role of Calcium and Strontium as the Most Dominant Elements during Combinations of Different Alkaline Earth Metals in the Synthesis of Crystalline Silica-Carbonate Biomorphs Mayra Cuéllar-Cruz 1,2,* and Abel Moreno 2,* 1 Departamento de Biología, División de Ciencias Naturales y Exactas, Campus Guanajuato, Universidad de Guanajuato, Noria Alta S/N, Col. Noria Alta, Guanajuato C.P. 36050, Mexico 2 Instituto de Química, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Av. Universidad 3000, Ciudad Universitaria, Ciudad de México 04510, Mexico * Correspondence:
[email protected] (M.C.-C.);
[email protected] (A.M.) Received: 22 June 2019; Accepted: 22 July 2019; Published: 24 July 2019 Abstract: The origin of life from the chemical point of view is an intriguing and fascinating topic, and is of continuous interest. Currently, the chemical elements that are part of the different cellular types from microorganisms to higher organisms have been described. However, although science has advanced in this context, it has not been elucidated yet which were the first chemical elements that gave origin to the first primitive cells, nor how evolution eliminated or incorporated other chemical elements to give origin to other types of cells through evolution. Calcium, barium, and strontium silica-carbonates have been obtained in vitro and named biomorphs, because they mimic living organism structures. Therefore, it is considered that these forms can resemble the first structures that were part of primitive organisms. Hence, the objective of this work was to synthesize biomorphs starting with different mixtures of alkaline earth metals—beryllium (Be2+), magnesium (Mg2+), calcium (Ca2+), barium (Ba2+), and strontium (Sr2+)—in the presence of nucleic acids, RNA and genomic DNA (gDNA).