Aleksandr Ivanovich Oparin

Russian biochemist

• Born: March 2, 1894
• Birthplace: Uglich, Russia
• Died: April 21, 1980
• Place of death: Moscow, Soviet Union (now in Russia)

Oparin was the principal pioneer in theorizing on the origins of life on Earth from inorganic matter. Of major importance also were his works that dealt with the biochemistry of plant material, from which he successfully developed the principles of Soviet biochemistry based on biocatalysis.

Early Life

Aleksandr Ivanovich Oparin (ah-PAH-reen) was the youngest of three children in a typical Russian family. Because the area lacked a secondary school, Oparin’s family moved to Moscow when he was nine, making it possible for him to continue his education. Details of his younger years are scant until he reached college age. Attaining a complete secondary education, in which he distinguished himself by his abilities in science, Oparin decided to attend Moscow State University. There he became interested in plant physiology, studying in the natural sciences department of the physico-mathematical faculty. While at the school, he became associated with and greatly influenced by K. A. Timiryazev, who had known Charles Darwin and was a determined exponent of his theory of evolution. Oparin himself was drawn to Darwin’s theory of natural selection, a viewpoint that would dominate his later career and be a special feature of his theory of the beginnings of life.

Life’s Work

Impressed with the ideas inherent in contemporary Darwinian thinking, particularly that of selection for characteristics best adapted to a specific environment, Oparin began to extend the theory of evolution to the possible biochemical origin of life. Graduated in 1917, Oparin worked in several research institutes and institutions of higher learning, doing research under A. N. Bakh in biochemistry and botany. In 1922, his ideas, already in a concrete form, were presented at a meeting of the Russian Botanical Society, causing quite a stir, particularly among critics of the idea that life could form from nonliving chemicals. The entire topic of life’s original beginnings had been ignored for years because of a basic biological assumption that “life begets life,” which was prevalent since Louis Pasteur’s experiments put to rest the idea of spontaneous generation of organic bodies, and also because of the tremendous philosophical and religious issues inherent in the subject. With the collapse of the vitalistic theory, removing the need for a spiritual force animating matter to distinguish it from nonliving material, it became possible to explain life exclusively in terms of chemistry and physics, an outlook readily adopted by members of the physical sciences.

Oparin’s theory was based on three premises, derived from his ideas on how life might have arisen in the primitive conditions that existed on Earth some three billion years previously. He assumed that the first organisms arose between 4.7 and 3.2 billion years ago in the ancestral world seas. The oceans, in the process, had derived the necessary chemicals for complete organic synthesis from the primordial atmosphere, consisting of methane, hydrogen, ammonia, and water, much like the atmospheres today encircling the giant planets Jupiter and Saturn. These earliest organisms would not have been able to synthesize their own food but rather must have been heterotrophs, deriving nutrients from the surrounding medium or from consuming each other this was in conflict with the then-current idea that all the early life-forms were autotrophs, making their own food supplies. Second, Oparin speculated that there was a virtually unlimited, continual supply of energy usable by the organisms, most likely in the form of sunlight, particularly ultraviolet, but also possibly from other sources (including volcanoes, lightning discharges in electrical storms, meteoric actions, and cosmic rays). Since this energy was continually added, life forming was not limited by the second law of thermodynamics acting in a closed system. Finally, Oparin postulated that life had to be characterized by a high degree of structural and functional organization before it could be called alive. This last point stood strongly at odds with the prevailing view that life was basically molecular in nature. To back up his arguments, he showed, by using well-known chemical reactions, how molecules might combine to form the important organic molecules and amino acids needed. Through painstaking laboratory experiments, he was able definitively to answer his critics, particularly as to the feasibility of reactions being caused by energy from either electrical storms or ultraviolet radiation from the sun. His findings, although they did not answer the question of how primitive organisms could reproduce, suggested that the necessary degree of order in protein structure probably resulted from restrictions imposed on the binding of amino acids through their shapes and electric charge distribution. Oparin showed conclusively that enzymes, as proteins, functioned much more efficiently in synthetic cells than in an ordinary aqueous solution. This idea was critical to later experiments with microscopic droplets, called “coacervates,” of gelatin and gum arabic that demonstrated that the droplets, in a water and sugar solution, would grow and continually reproduce by budding.

Oparin’s basic theory, published in 1924, reached the general public in 1936 in Vozniknovenie zhizni na zemle (The Origin of Life , 1939). This single work stimulated great interest and was first tested analytically in 1953 by S. L. Miller and Harold C. Urey. These two scientists used a mixture of Oparin’s gases to simulate the early atmosphere of primordial Earth with electrical discharges, simulating lightning bolts for energy that ran through the circulating gases. After the test period of two weeks, the chemicals that were turning the water turbid were found to be compounds of sugars, complex carbohydrates, and amino acids, the latter being the basic material for producing proteins and enzymes. Additional confirmation of Oparin’s idea came almost at the same time, with the discovery of fossilized amino acids in rocks dating some three billion years old. C. Ponnamperuna complemented Oparin’s theory by performing the same experiments but altering the original mixture of gases, adding other compounds and molecules quite regularly found in volcanic discharges. He showed that, in support of Oparin’s ideas, one could easily make nucleotides, dinucleotides, and ATP (adenosine triphosphate, the energy molecule in the cells) more organic materials necessary for life. Oparin himself carried the work forward when he was able in the laboratory to polymerize adenine to form droplets that he called protobionts. These droplets carried out many of the normal processes associated with life such as absorbing molecules from the surrounding media, metabolizing those molecules, recombining the ingredients in their own structures, and reproducing by division. Oparin believed that these early creations were alive because of their spectacular ability to reproduce and to take in and use foodstuffs.

In 1929, Oparin became professor of plant biochemistry at Moscow State University. In 1935, he helped found, with the botanist Bakh, the Bakh Institute of Biochemistry at the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union in Moscow. He was appointed by the government to be deputy director of the institute until 1946, when he became the director, a position he held until his death in April, 1980. From 1948 to 1955, Oparin also served as the academician-secretary of the Department of Biology of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. For his work, he was the noteworthy recipient of the A. N. Bakh Prize in 1950 and the Élie Metchnikoff Gold Prize in 1950.

Significance

Aleksandr Ivanovich Oparin became one of the best-known Soviet biochemists internationally. After being graduated from Moscow State University in biological chemistry, he helped cofound the Institute of Biochemistry. His main works dealt with the development of biochemical principles necessary for processing plant raw materials, processes vital to the economy of his country. He became greatly interested in the enzymatic activities in plants, the study of such enzymes leading to his work on the origin of terrestrial life. He was able to show through scientific experiments that biocatalysis was the basis of the production in nature of a large number of food products, the combined operation of molecules and enzymes together being necessary for the formation of starches, sugars, and other carbohydrates and proteins found in usable plants. Virtually alone, he developed the principles of Soviet technical botanical biochemistry.

Oparin is best known worldwide for his hypotheses on the origin of life on the planet, first made available in 1922, and for The Origin of Life. According to his theory, life originated on Earth as a result of evolution acting on molecules formed from simpler combinations created in Earth’s primordial atmosphere by violent energy discharges. Such complex molecules, raining down on the oceans, came together to react and produce structures with the basic characteristics of life, including, as he showed in the laboratory, the ability to grow, metabolize, and reproduce. Subsequent work by others has given credence to many of his ideas.

As a result of his work, Oparin was elected president in 1970 of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life, becoming honorary president in 1977. Over the years, he has been a member of numerous scientific societies, including the academies of Bulgaria, East Germany, Cuba, Spain, Italy, and the Leopoldine German Academy of Researchers in the Natural Sciences. He received numerous awards and medals including one as Hero of Socialist Labor (1969), the Lenin Prize (1974), five Orders of Lenin, two other Soviet orders, and many foreign awards. He was a member of the Soviet Committee in Defense of Peace and a member and vice president of the International Federation of Scientists. Oparin’s participation contributed to his belief in world peace and a harmony well worth looking for overriding the magnificence of nature.

Bibliography

Bernal, J. D. The Origin of Life. Cleveland, Ohio: World, 1967. Provides a detailed review of the known characteristics of life and the various solutions that have been proposed to account for its origin. Many ideas are presented as extensions of those of Oparin. The importance of primeval conditions is stressed. Includes an extensive bibliography and a very usable glossary of necessary terms.

Cairns-Smith, A. G. The Life Puzzle: On Crystals and Organisms and on the Possibility of a Crystal as an Ancestor. Edinburgh, Scotland: Oliver and Boyd, 1971. An investigative account of how life could have arisen from developments within crystalline matter. Stressing the relationships between inorganic crystals and organic forms, the author clearly presents the rationale for the belief that life could arise from nonliving forms.

Calvin, Melvin. Chemical Evolution: Molecular Evolution Towards the Origin of Living Systems on the Earth and Elsewhere. New York: Oxford University Press, 1969. An older book that presents in detail the evidence, both chemical and physical, for life arising in the past from inorganic materials. Traces the early finds of fossils to substantiate ideas such as Oparin’s.

Fox, Sidney W. Molecular Evolution and the Origin of Life. San Francisco, Calif.: W. H. Freeman, 1972. This well-written work presents a detailed view of how, once chemical molecules of sufficient complexity are formed, processes associated with evolution take over to lead to life. Fox details many theories of life’s formation, including the data and problems with each theory. Includes comprehensive references.

Futuyama, Douglas J. Evolutionary Biology. Sunderland, Mass.: Sineuer, 1986. A detailed explanatory treatment of how evolution works, starting from the formation of life molecules through the processes that have acted on Earth for four billion years. Encompasses a wide range of evolutionary thought and covers Oparin and others speculating on life’s origins. Very well written and illustrated.

Hoyle, Fred. The Intelligent Universe. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1983. A very enjoyable and well-illustrated book that explains how life might have formed anywhere in the universe as a result of chemical reactions occurring on Earth and in the depths of space. Presents scenarios dealing with the evolution of life under diverse conditions and the possible transmittal of life elsewhere in the galaxy.

Oparin, Aleksandr Ivanovich. The Origin of Life. 2d ed. Translated with annotations by Sergius Morgulis. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover, 2003. The original work on the possible causes and mechanisms for organic molecule formation early in Earth’s history. Presents all Oparin’s major ideas, including a discussion of molecular formation, energy sources, and reactions observed in the laboratory.