Why you should never clean out your fridge

[Iason Ouabache]

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/10/old_scientists_never_clean_out.php

We all know the story of the Miller-Urey experiment. In 1953, a young graduate student named Stanley Miller ran an off-the-wall experiment: he ran water, methane, ammonia, and hydrogen in a sealed flask with a pair of electrodes to produce a spark, and from those simple building blocks discovered that more complex compounds, such as amino acids, were spontaneously produced. Stanley Miller died in 2007, and in going through his effects, the original apparatus was discovered, and in addition, several small sealed vials containing the sludge produced in the original experiment were also found.

This isn't too surprising. I've gone through a few old scientists' labs, and you'd be surprised at all the antiquities they preserved, all with notes documenting exactly what they are. It's habit to keep this stuff.

Now the cool part, though: the scientists who unearthed the old samples ran them through modern analysis techniques, which are a bit more sensitive than the tools they had in the 1950s. In 1953, Miller reported the recovery of five amino acids from his experiment. The reanalysis found twenty two amino acids and five amines in the vials. He was more successful than he knew!

[Xirian]

I find this information fascinating.  I want to be a scientist.  They find the most fucked up shit.  Bravo Dr. Miller!

[Kai]

Could this be secondary contamination though?

If its not, just another piece of coolness.

[Vene]

I think at this point the abiotic synthesis of biologically important molecules has been pretty well demonstrated.  But, to show that there wasn't contamination I think his experiment should be ran again and analyzed.  Actually, I wish I could read the article in Science because I'm curious as to which techniques were used.

[Iason Ouabache]

The Miller-Urey experiment has been rerun several times over the years. Miller tried it again in 1983 when it was found out that there were amounts of carbon dioxide and nitrogen that he didn't account for in his original run. That one didn't turn out so well and he didn't get many amino acids due to high levels of nitrites. However Jeffrey Bada tried it again in 2007 but he added iron and carbonate minerals that would neutralize the nitrites and acids and got some very good results.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=primordial-soup-urey-miller-evolution-experiment-repeated&SID=mail

[Kai]

I'm still going with the hydrothermal vents, but this is cool anyway. 

[Bruno]

I wonder what primordial soup tastes like.

[Golden Applesauce]

I wonder what primordial soup tastes like.

Ammonia and methane.

[Bruno]

So, kind of like jenkem then.

[Kai]

So, kind of like jenkem then.

Jenkem is fermented though. There weren't any organisms to ferment in primordial soup.

[Iason Ouabache]

Heh. I just heard on the Naked Scientists that it was Jeffrey Bada who found the old equipment and reanalyzed it.  I missed that the first time.