|
Interesting Knowledge About Clay by Perry A~ Arledge The crust of the Earth is rock, but as it breaks down into smaller fragments and particles it evolves into soil, sand, silt and clay. Clays are the smallest and finest of the mineral particles, and they are typically made up of silicate crystals that can take the shape of well-formed hexagonal structures that are the basis of biological molecules. Such crystals could have served as the template upon which the biological molecules could form their similar hexagonal structures. Graham Cairns-Smith of Scotland's University of Glasgow suggests that clays are "proto-organisms" that could have served as the pattern for living systems. He notes that metals in clay lattices can form complexes with the precursors of proteins and DNA. These lattices provide the molecular structure that is necessary to store the energy needed to catalyze chemical reactions, and most importantly, to reproduce. In a paper titled "Clay" published in the April 1979 issue of Scientific American, Georges Millot, who is a member of the French Academy of Sciences and professor of geology at the Universite Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg, also confirms the unique electrochemical properties and geometric structure of clay. Millot believes these specialized properties may have played an important part in allowing amino acids to evolve into the long peptide chains that make up one of the key biological structures: the proteins. |
