.金刚石——生命的诞生石

金刚石——生命的诞生石照片中显示的是未磨光的天然金刚石。

利用这个湿度试验箱，研究人员发现结晶水层形成于一块氢化金刚石上。

经测量，随着湿度的增加，氢化金刚石的导电性能在下降。

Diamonds May Be Life's BirthstoneBy Michael Schirber胡德良译One of the hurdles in origin-of-life theories is that the pieces that make up complex biomolecules do not readily come together by themselves. A group of scientists proposes that diamonds provided a kind of "workbench" for biomolecule manufacturing on early Earth.生物起源理论所遇到的障碍之一就是：生物分子很复杂，构成这种分子的零散材料不易自行结合在一起。

一组科学家提出，金刚石在地球早期提供了一个制造生物分子的平台。

Not long after its formation, our planet was —according to astrobiologists — awash in a primordial soup that contained the rudimentary ingredients of life. The fly in the "soup" theory, however, is that the small molecular bits likely needed outside help in order to latch together into the long, complex biomolecules that living organisms use.天体生物学家们认为，地球形成之后不久便被含有生命基础成分的原生汤覆盖。

然而，原生汤理论中令人扫兴的一点是，其中微小的分子颗粒可能需要外界的帮助才能结合在一起，进而形成细长而复杂的生物分子，用来形成生物活体。

Some scientists have suggested that the surfaces of minerals on the early Earth provided an organizing platform upon which the building blocks of life could assemble. Recent studies of diamond suggest that its surface would be especially good for this. 一些科学家提出，早期地球上矿物的表面提供了一个组织平台，在这样的平台上构成生命的材料可以聚集起来。

最近对金刚石的研究表明，其表面特别适合生命材料的聚集。

"Diamond is totally non-toxic, an excellentbiomaterial and certainly the only naturally existing material that is completely biocompatible on all levels — presumably the best of all possible platforms for the formation of life," said Andrei Sommer from the University of Ulm in Germany.“金刚石毫无毒性，其本身就是极好的生物材料，而且肯定是唯一完全适合于生物的天然矿物，可能是最适合生命形成的平台，”德国乌尔姆大学的安德雷·萨默说。

Sommer and his colleagues discovered that a certain type of diamond, called hydrogenated diamond, imposes a rigid order on molecules near its surface. They suggest, in a recent issue of the journal Crystal Growth and Design, 萨默及同事发现，一种金刚石叫做氢化金刚石，可以对接近其表面的分子发出严格的指令。

他们在最近一期《晶体生长与设计》杂志上提出，这种以金刚石为媒介的指令有助于零散材料的结合，that this diamond-mediated order helped fittogether the pieces that led to the emergenceof life.导致生命的出现。

Frozen with fear牢固的结晶层Hydrogenated diamonds are just diamonds with an outer coating of hydrogen atoms, but they are not something you'll find in your local jewelry shop. In fact, the only hydrogenated diamonds currently known are all made in the lab. 氢化金刚石只不过是外部覆盖着一层氢原子的金刚石，然而并不是人们在当地珠宝店见到的那种金刚石。

事实上，目前已知的氢化金刚石都是在实验室里制作的。

"In nature, diamond hydrogenation is likely to occur in or in the vicinity of volcanoes known to emit a variety of hot gases including hydrogen," Sommer said. The early Earth had so much volcanic activity that he thinks it is highly probable that hydrogenated diamonds existed back then. “在自然界中，氢化金刚石有可能出现在火山附近，因为据了解火山活动会释放出包括氢在内的各种高温气体，”萨默说。

早期地球上的火山活动异常频繁，因此萨默认为那时氢化金刚石很可能是存在的。

Sommer and his collaborators previouslyshowed that hydrogenated diamond is very hydrophobic, or "water fearing" — meaning it pushes water away. When hydrogenated diamond is wetted, the water molecules line up on the surface as if they were frozen into a crystal layer (an analogy might be static electricity making all the hairs on your head point out).萨默及同事以前曾经证实：氢化金刚石是特别不易沾水的，或者说它患有“恐水症”，这就意味着它对水具有排斥作用。

当氢化金刚石潮湿后，水分子就会在其表面上排列起来，好像被冻结而形成结晶层一样。

这个情况可能类似于静电会使人们的全部头发竖起来。

Surprisingly, these crystal water layers do not disappear when the hydrogenated diamond is fully immersed in water. Because this is the only natural material known to exhibit this behavior, Sommer's team proposes that small organic molecules in the primordial soup landed on hydrogenated diamond and were helped by its robust crystal water layers into linking together to form proteins and DNA. 令人吃惊的是，当把氢化金刚石完全浸入水中的时候，这些结晶水层并不消失。

据了解，这是唯一表现出这种特性的天然材料，因此萨默研究小组指出：原生汤中的小型有机分子落在氢化金刚石上，牢牢吸附在其表面上的结晶水层帮助这些分子结合起来，形成了蛋白质和脱氧核糖核酸（DNA）。

Support for this idea comes from a recent 最近的一项研究也支持这个观点。

该研study that found that certain nucleobases (the building blocks of DNA and RNA) form an organized pattern on the surface of graphite, which is chemically similar to diamond.究发现：某些特定的碱基（DNA和RNA 的构成材料）在石墨的表面上可以形成有条理的图案，而石墨的化学性质类似于金刚石。

Hydrogenated diamond should be a betterorganizing platform than graphite, Sommer said. This is because the crystal layers that form on it are not static; they change with temperature and light intensity. The resulting fluctuations could have helped drive the development of novel molecules in the primordial soup.萨默称，比起石墨，氢化金刚石应该是更理想的组织平台。