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Stanley Miller Downloaded from by Guest on 30 September 2021 Neil A IA Conversation Iwith.. * . Stanley Miller Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/abt/article-pdf/51/6/349/44208/4448946.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 Neil A. Campbell As a chemical system, what most distinguishes life Biology and chemistry are allied sciences. Nowhere is their in- terdependencemore evident than in the study of the origin of life. from nonliving matter? Chemists and biologists have long speculatedabout the conditions "The essential difference between life and nonlife is of primitiveEarth and how that environmentcould have given rise replication. There are other differences, but this is to the precursorsof living cells. the essential one. In addition to replicationthere has In 1953, when Stanley Miller was only 23 years old, he per- formed an experimentthat would attractglobal attention. In a lab- to be mutation, with the mutations transmittedto the oratoryat the University of Chicago, Millerattempted to simulate progeny. Thus the origin of life is the origin of repli- the chemicaldynamics of the primordialEarth in a glass apparatus cation with mutation. Another way to state this is that he constructed. His landmarkexperiment was the first to test the hypothesis that, given the right conditions, the buildingblocks that the origin of life is the origin of evolution, since of life could originate from simple chemicals. In this interview, reproduction or replication, mutation and selection Millershares the events that led to his experimentand the results result in Darwinian evolution." that brought the world a step closer to understandinghow life on Earthbegan. You're best known for your experiments demon- Today Miller is professor of chemistryat the Universityof Cali- fornia at San Diego where he continues his researchon the pre- strating that organic molecules could have been pro- biotic synthesis of organiccompounds. In addition to his research, duced on the early Earthbefore there was life. What Miller teaches courses in biochemical evolution, molecular bio- is an organic molecule? chemistryand physical chemistry. "The old definition, 150 years ago, was a molecule that came from living organisms. It was felt that carbon compounds, except carbon dioxide and Thinking back to your student days, can you recall carbon monoxide, came only from living organisms how you chose your schools-Berkeley for your un- and had some sort of vital force in them. But we now dergraduate education and the University of Chi- know that there is no vital force, and organic com- cago for graduate school? pounds are just those that contain carbon." "I chose Berkeley because it was logical-right near my home in Oakland, and it was a good school. It's also to from home. As for Thisinterview is oneof eightwhich will appearin The American costly go away graduate Biology Teacher in its September1989 throughJune 1990 school, the Chemistry Department at Berkeley did issues.All areexcerpted from conversations between eminent biol- not allow undergraduatesto continue on as graduate ogists and Neil A. Campbell,author of the textbookBiology students. This is common in chemistry departments. (Benjamin/CummingsPublishing Co., RedwoodCity, CA). The feeling is that chemistry is so diverse that stu- Theinterviews introduce each unit of the secondedition of Bi- dents should broaden their ology, to be publishedin January.This interviewwith Stanley perspective by attending Millerwill befollowed by similardiscussions with JaneGoodall, a different school. I talked to a number of professors Bill Schopf,Nancy Wexler, George Bartholomew, Niles Eldredge, about which was the best place to go and, at the CharlesLeblond and RuthSatter. time, Chicago seemed the best choice. The real Campbellhas taughtgeneral biology to a varietyof studentsat problem was whether or not the stipend that I was CornellUniversity, Pomona College and San BernardinoValley offered was adequate. Although shopping around Collegefor thepast 21 years.Now at the Universityof California, Riverside,Campbell has invested11 yearsin the developmentof for the biggest fellowship is not a good thing to do, Biology. you have to have enough money to live on." MILLER 349 What experiments were historically important in compounds. He tried to talk me out of it and get me dispelling the myth that organic molecules are to do another project. When he realized I was deter- products of special vital forces? mined, he explained that he felt this experiment was "The example that is usually cited is Wohler's syn- very risky and he was responsible for making certain thesis of urea in 1828, in which he took ammonium that I could come up with a Ph.D. thesis in two or cyanate and converted it to urea, which is a product three years. So we agreed that we would try it for six of animal metabolism. But the idea didn't catch on months or a year, and if nothing came out of it, we until people started making acetic acid and other or- would go back to something conventional. But since ganic compounds from starting materialsnot derived we obtained encouraging results quickly, there was from living organisms." never any question that we would continue with it." Prior to your experiments in the early 1950s, what When Urey described your proposed experiment at a was the prevalent view among biologists about the seminar, a doubtful listener asked, "And what do origin of the first organic molecules? you expect to get?" Urey replied "Beilstein." What "As far as I can tell, they really didn't think much did he mean? about it. There was just no rational explanation. "He was referring to Beilstein'sHandbuch der Organi- What was usually proposed was that life arose by an schen Chemie.It used to be a single volume, but by extremely improbable event. There was Oparin's now it has grown to about 400 volumes. These Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/abt/article-pdf/51/6/349/44208/4448946.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 theory that had been around since 1938 which pro- volumes contain a list of properties of every organic posed that there was an abundant organic soup, and compound that has been reported, a few million by that the first organisms were derived from these pre- this time. And what he meant was that we would get biotic organic compounds and ate them rather than every possible type of organic compound formed making their own." more or less randomly." If organisms didn't make the organic substances When you actually cranked up your apparatus to present in this primordial soup, then what was the simulate early Earth conditions, what did you source of these molecules? make? "Oparin proposed that the primitive atmosphere "The surprise was that we didn't get Beilstein, we contained the gases methane, ammonia, hydrogen got mainly organic compounds of biological signifi- and water, and chemical reactions in that primitive cance. And the amino acids were formed, not in trace atmosphere produced the first organic molecules. quantities, but abundantly! The experiment went That hypothesis had a good deal of appeal, but beyond our wildest hopes." without experiments, it was talked about but not What are amino acids? very well accepted." "Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins. What did you propose to do as an experiment to test There are 20 of them that occur in proteins, but there the hypothesis? are many thousands more that are possible. Since "Harold Urey, my advisor at the University of Chi- proteins are important to living organisms, making cago, knew that it was more reasonable to make or- amino acids would be considered very important." ganic compounds from the reduced gases in the pro- What was the physical appearance of the soup that posed primitive atmosphere than in our modern at- you made in your discharge apparatus? mosphere. But after some discussion, it was felt that "The first time I did the experiment, it turned red if methane, ammonia and water were combined and after sparking overnight. Very dramatic!And then just left to sit, organic compounds would not be after it turned red, it got more yellow and then made. Energy must be added. And for the source of brown as the sparking went on. The experiment is energy, the choices would be ultravioletlight or elec- easily reproducible with the exception of this red tric discharge (a spark). Ultravioletlight is difficultto color." work with, so we settled on an electric discharge, which was handy around most chemical labs in the After you'd been on your project for about three and form of a vacuum leak detector. The plan was to sim- a half months, you were ready to publish your first ulate the primitive atmosphere in a glass apparatus, paper reporting your results. Graduate students energize the mixture of gases with an electricalspark usually list their advisors as coauthors on their and see if I made any organic molecules." manuscripts, but when you took your paper to Urey, he suggested that you remove his name from the When you first proposed the experiment, what was manuscript. Why was that? Urey's initial reaction? "Well, he felt that if his name had been on the paper "Well, I went up to Urey and told him that I wanted he would have gotten all the credit and I would have to do this experiment testing his ideas about the gotten none. So he took his name off. And even at primitive atmosphere and the synthesis of organic that, it's known as the Miller-Ureyexperiment. And 350 THE AMERICAN BIOLOGY TEACHER, VOLUME 51, NO. 6, SEPTEMBER 1989 it's probably the thing he's best known for, with the team at the NASA Ames Research Center, it turned exception of the discovery of deuterium-for which out that amino acids were present at the parts per he won the Nobel Prize-and his work on the atomic million level.
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